What Are the Pros of Finding Fossils?

Age and Environmental Data

• Fossils are used to date sedimentary rock sequences. Their mere presence allows scientists to date these sequences in terms of geological age. Scientists can also date the carbon content of the fossils with carbon dating technology to reach a more accurate age determination. Fossils can also be used to tell what the historical environmental conditions were in a certain area. This is done by using evolutionary theory to predict what ancient organisms lived on based on what their distant offspring consume in the present day.

Earth Movement Data

• The discovery of marine shell fossils in the highlands surrounding Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, Australia allowed scientists to date the creation of these highlands by first dating the fossils. Scientists knew that these organisms only lived in underwater marine habitats. Based on the date of the fossils, scientists could safely predict that at the point in time when these organisms perished, the surrounding area was underwater.

Ancient Geographical Data

• Sometimes scientists find groups of similar fossils in rocks of the same age on separate continents. Scientists then must determine how these organisms could have moved such great distances. It wasn't until the theory of plate tectonics was discovered in the 1960s that scientists finally understood that it was not the organisms that moved but rather the continents. Now scientists use these scattered fossil groups to get a better idea of how the continents moved throughout history.

Data Concerning Evolution

• Out of any scientific proof discovered, fossils provide the most support for the theory of evolution. Without fossils, extinct organisms would have vanished without a trace. Fossils also provide information relating to the important events in earth's history, such as the origin of life, mass extinctions, the first vertebrates, the origin of flight and human evolution.