• Question: So are there any kind of fossils that have been found with you in it? Or are you too squishy?

    Asked by frostycetacea to Scottish Crossbill, Brachiopod on 13 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Terebratulina Retusa

      Terebratulina Retusa answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      I’m the very opposite of squishy! One of the reasons I have such a good fossil record is that I’m mostly made of very hard shell.

    • Photo: Scottish Crossbill

      Scottish Crossbill answered on 29 Nov 2017:

      I don’t know of any fossils with crossbills in them, but there are certainly ones with birds in them. In fact the most important and famous fossil ever found – archaeopteryx – is an ancestor of all the birds. Soooo cool.

Comments

  • Photo: Baltic clam

    Baltic clam commented on :

    clams often have very good fossil records, as the shells can preserve well. it depends on where they live. The best fossils are in muddy environments

  • Photo: Common starfish

    Common starfish commented on :

    Fossil starfish have been found, yes. But starfish skeletons sometimes fall apart when they die so only under special circumstances are nice intact fossils of starfish formed.

    Here is a link to the webpage of Dr Imran Rahman who is an expert on echinoderm fossils and is one of the team championing the common starfish:

    http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/research/imran_rahman.htm

    Another member of the common starfish team is Dr Tim Ewin, who is the curator of the echinoderm fossil collection at the Natural History Museum in London:

    http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/staff-directory/tim-ewin.html

    If you have any specific questions about fossil echinoderms – Imran and Tim will be able to answer them.

  • Photo: Abyssal Grenadier

    Abyssal Grenadier commented on :

    Thus far, no fossils have been found for the abyssal grenadier or its genus – Corphaenoides. There are fossils of fish starting the late Cambrian or about 500 million years ago. We do think that many of fish species, including the abyssal grenadier, found in the deep seas originated in freshwater and shallow seas about 100 million years ago. The deep sea was then colonized by these shallow and freshwater species about 66 million years, just after the extinction of dinosaurs. This explosion of diversity into the deep sea happened about the same time as the explosion of diversity with mammals and birds.