Truth Behind Dinosaur Fossils

Paleontology is the branch of biology that studies the forms of life that existed in the past geologic periods and eras, mainly by studying and scrutinizing of its remains, the fossils. Basically, fossils are those what is left and remnants of a dead animal or a plant that can be seen these days that has been ingenuously planted on rocks and other form of hard earthly surfaces.

Although, of course, it doesn't mean that the said "remains" are the real skeletons or the actual plant rather fossils can be a petrified product of the original and also be the imprints like footprints. Fossils are believed and considered to have been submerged on water before, for the reason of the belief of that the remains of animal or plant was first covered by a soft soil and after some times layers of it gathered on it, hardened, solidify and then were pressed on together by natural processes. The water that is made up of minerals goes through the layers and changed the plant or animal relics into a rock like appearance and features.

The most intriguing kinds are the dinosaur fossils. The name dinosaur is a derived word from Latin terms: deinos, which means, "Great;" sauros for "lizard;" and fossils meaning "dug up." Literally, it means "great lizard that was dug up." The occurrence of these things is not new to us anymore.

In fact, people have been finding dinosaur fossils for almost thousands of years. The very fist recorded finding of the existence of dinosaurs is most of it in England, through a British fossil finder named as William Buckland. It was in the year 1819 when he exposed his findings of Megalosaurus Bucklandii (Buckland's Giant Lizard) from England.

In the year1824, his discovery was named after him. However, earlier than this, Reverend Plot had discovered a very large femur bone during the year 1676 also in England. After careful studies, authorities imply that it may in fact have belonged to a dinosaur. Nevertheless, because there were past discoveries of enormous human skeletal remains that may range from 8 feet to 12 feet-tall many assumed that the discovery might have belonged to a very tall, almost a giant like human. However, during the year 1838, the entire dinosaur fossil was seen at New Jersey, USA by William Parker Foulke.

Out of curiosity, many people would hollow out information about the presence and occurrence of dinosaurs way back early times and this helped them become aware of their existence so the next fossil discovery was given enough attention. Also, dinosaur fossils were believed to be millions of years old, which were based on its geologic column, which dates fossils based on the rock's type, appearance, and formation where they are found.

These fossils are located all through the earth's sedimentary layers. Almost 95.0% of all earth's fossil recorded comes from the remains of marine invertebrates, 4.74% are from plants and estimate of 0.25% are land invertebrates and 0.0125% are a vertebrate. Among those vertebrates, the majority comes from fishes. Furthermore, those 95% vertebrates are found to have only one bone or less.

Through these dinosaur fossils, people of modern days are able to recognize that there are animals living here on earth even before the existence of the first man. This, in one way or another made us realize the importance of animals consequently believing that modern animals should be preserved as much as possible. These "leftovers" also give us a picture of what the earth looks like before now.