Ask Dr. Jay
If you have any questions about the course, feel free to ask the author of the book! You have to register in order to ask questions, but registration is free, and we won’t share your information with anyone.

Links for the Seventh Chapter

Robert Hooke’s Micrographia
This is the book that confirmed fossils are the preserved remains of once-living organisms, not just interestingly-shaped rocks.

Frozen mammoth
This video shows what is probably the best-preserved mammoth fossil that has been discovered.

Amber Fossils
This video, which uses the uniformitarian timescale, discusses and shows fossils preserved by amber.

How Fossils Form
This video, which uses the uniformitarian timescale, discusses many ways that fossils form. There is a good animation of amber preservation.

How fossil footprints are formed.

This article, which uses the uniformitarian timescale, has a good series of drawings that illustrate how fossil footprints are formed.

Archaeoraptor—Phony ‘feathered’ fossil
This article gives a more detailed account of the fake fossil known as Archaeoraptor.

Turning Teddy Bears into Stone
This video gives an excellent example of how petrifaction can occur very quickly.

A Recent Examnple of an Overinterpreted Fossil
This article discusses an amber fossil that was interpreted to be a dinosaur. As the top of the article says, that conclusion is most likely wrong. If you read the article note how certain the statements are, even though we now know they are wrong.

Paleontology: New Evidence Revises Thinking, Anomalocaris
This link has a great video showing several mistakes made in interpreting a single organisms based on incomplete fossils.

The ‘Lazarus effect’: rodent ‘resurrection’!
This article discusses another example of an animal that was thought to be extinct but isn’t.

Using Index Fossils
This video gives a detailed discussion of how index fossils are determined and used.