Fossil

Fossils (from Classical Latin fossilis; literally, "obtained by digging") are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations and sedimentary layers (strata) is known as the fossil record.

To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.
Charles Darwin

Quotes

• There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world.
  • Porter Kier, Smithsonian Institution scientist, New Scientist, January 15, 1981, p. 129.

• The record of the rocks contains very little, other than bacteria and one-celled plants until, about a billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled creatures appeared on earth.
  • Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, by Robert Jastrow, 1981, p. 23. Letting the Fossil Record Speak; Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?

• Beginning at the base of the Cambrian period and extending for about 10 million years, all the major groups of skeletonized invertebrates made their first appearance in the most spectacular rise in diversity ever recorded on our planet.
  • Salvador E. Luria, Stephen Jay Gould and Sam Singer, A View of Life, pp. 638.

• To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.
  • Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Part Two, p. 90.

• The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).
  • Carl Sagan, Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, 1980, p. 29. Letting the Fossil Record Speak; Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?

See also

• Paleontology