A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, object
Ceratopsian skulls are common in the Dzungarian Gate mountain pass in Asia, an area once famous for gold mines and cold winds. This has been attributed to legends of both gryphons and the land of Hyperborea.
Fossil shells from the cretaceous era sea urchin, Micraster, were used in medieval times as both shepherd's crowns to protect houses, and as painted fairy loaves by bakers to bring luck to their bread-making.
Georges Cuvier's 1812 skeletal reconstruction of Anoplotherium commune based on fossil remains of the extinct artiodactyl from Montmartre in Paris, France
Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus from the 1834 Czech edition of Cuvier's Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe
Geology is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical bodies, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. The name comes fr
The Grand Canyon, Arizona, in March 2013
The Permian through Jurassic stratigraphy of the Colorado Plateau area of southeastern Utah is an example of both original horizontality and the law of superposition. These strata make up much of the famous prominent rock formations in widely spaced protected areas such as Capitol Reef National Park and Canyonlands National Park. From top to bottom: Rounded tan domes of the Navajo Sandstone; layered red Kayenta Formation; cliff-forming, vertically jointed, red
The mineral zircon is often used in radiometric dating.
The San Andreas Fault in California is a strike-slip fault