By Garrett Hunemuller

Purpose  The purpose behind fossil records to help us understand how these organisms died and how they evolved to the next step in the evolutionary chain.

The layers of time  If you look at rock, you notice it has many layers, and in some rocks there are fossils in curtain layers of that rock.  These layers represent a period in time and scientist believe that the fossils in that layer must be from that time.  The lowest layer of that rock is the oldest, and the highest layer is the youngest.

The layers of time cont.  The fossil on the lowest layer is older then the ones above that layer.  Also, the higher the layer get, the more complex the fossils become.

“Living” fossils  Scientist have found fossil of a fish called the coelacanth fish from over 400 million years ago and then disappeared 80 million years ago, only to reappear alive today.  The same is to say for horseshoe crabs, the six gill shark, and other sealife.

The problem with fossil record  If you go to a museum, and ask about fossil record, they would tell how they do it, but not how it show the next stage of evolution.