Question

What are the fossils? What do they tell us about the process of evolution?

Answer 1

Hint:Evolution is the change in the characteristics of any species that occur over a long period of time over several generations.

Complete answer:
Fossils:
>Fossils are the remains or traces of the living species that existed in ancient times that have been preserved by some natural processes.
>A fossil is defined as any preserved remains, impression or trace of any once living thing.
>Example of fossils include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, etc.
>The study of fossils is called Paleontology.
>Paleontology includes the study of age, method of formation, evolutionary significance of fossils.

Fossils – process of evolution:
>Fossils tell us about many things like when an organism lived, evidence for its progression and evolution of life on the Earth millions of years ago.
>Fossils are important evidence for evolution because fossils show that life on this Earth was once very different from the life found on the Earth today.
>By comparing the morphological, anatomical characteristics of modern species and fossils, paleontologists can infer the lineages of modern species.
>The layers of the Earth from which the fossil is recovered decides the age of the fossil.
>The fossils found deeper down are older as compared to the fossils that are found in the upper layers of the Earth.
>So, this gives an idea about the condition of Earth in that time or era.We can calculate the age of fossils with the help of the process called carbon dating.

Note:The higher organisms that are Eukaryotes get developed from the protobionts or prokaryotes by the process or evolution. The cell organelle Mitochondria also get developed by protobionts when aerobic bacteria engulfed those protobionts.