Question

State the significance of study of fossils in evolution.

Answer 1

Fossils are the remnants of animals, flora, and other organisms of former geologic age. Fossils are important proof of evolutionary changes because they help to identify that life on earth was not similar from life present on earth today.

Complete Answer:
- Fossils are the preserved remnants of animals, flora, and different organisms which are present million years ago. Fossils vary in age from 10,000 to 3.48 billion years old. Fossils range in size from microscopic, like single celled microorganisms, to gigantic, like dinosaurs and trees.
- Fossils can provide us information about how pre- historic plants and animals produced their food, reproduced and their features. It gives proof for how or why the fossil organism became extinct. Fossils permit researchers to match layers of rock in different locations by age based on how same the fossils in every rock layer are.
- Using information pieced collectively from fossil proof, scientists can reconstruct body varieties of animals that do not exist today and put together to explain the evolutionary relation between organisms.

Note: Usually a part of an organism is preserved or maintained as a fossil like body fossils like bones and shells, trace fossils like feces, and chemo-fossils are biochemical signals. Paleontologists can calculate the fossil’s age using techniques like radiometric relationships and classify them to explain the evolutionary relationships among organisms.