Question

What is fossilization and how are fossils formed?

Answer 1

Hint: They are the remains of plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and single-celled living things replaced by rock material or impressions of rock-preserved organisms. And they are formed through a particular process.

Complete step by step answer:
The process through which a plant or animal becomes a fossil is fossilization. This process is incredibly rare and only a small fraction of the plants and animals that have lived in the past 600 million years are preserved as fossils. This may be shocking, given the millions of fossils that have been found over the years, and the many billions remaining in the rocks. Those plants and animals that become fossils generally undergo several key steps, with some exceptions.
Fossils are formed in various forms, but most are formed in a watery environment when a plant or animal dies and is covered in mud and silt. Soft tissues rapidly decompose, leaving only strong bones or shells. The sediment builds over the top over time and hardens into rock. The buried bone or shell is often dissolved by groundwater, leaving behind a bone or shell-shaped hole or mark in the sediment. This is a mould that is natural. Crystals may form and create a fossil in the shape of the original bone or shell, known as a cast fossil if water rich in minerals fills this space.

Additional information: The remains or impressions of organisms that lived in the remote past are fossils. Fossils provide evidence that, through the process of continuous evolution, the present animal originated from previously existing animals. Fossils can be used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of an organism.

Note: The preserved remnants or traces from the history of animals, plants, and other species are fossils. Fossils are important proof of evolution because they show that life on earth was once different from life found today on earth.