The term fossil is derived from the Latin fossilis, simply meaning dug-up. As the word implies, fossils are initially buried in sedimentary layers in the earth and must be excavated, either artificially by human mechanisms or naturally by geological processes such as erosion or orogeny. In an area of sedimentary deposition with undisturbed conditions, remains of living organisms are constantly being deposited along with sediments. Fossil, then, is a somewhat subjective term, referring to the traces or remnants of animal or plant life that have been naturally preserved within the Earth's crust during some past geologic time. Geologists sometimes refer to unreplaced or unaltered organic remains from the Holocene, or from the past few thousand years, as subfossils. All the fossils laid down since the evolution of preservable remains, taken collectively, are referred to as the fossil record .
The oldest known fossils, or traces of life, date from the late Precambrian (Proterozoic), between...
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Cross-references
Coal Mining; Exposures, Examination of; Field Geology; Geological Methodology; Geological Survey and Mapping; Geological Surveys, State and Federal; Geology, Scope and Organization; Samples, Sampling.
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Petuch, E.J. (1988). Fossils and fossilization . In: General Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30844-X_32
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