Fossils (from the Latin word fossilis, meaning “dug up”) are the remains or traces of organisms that lived in the geologic past (older than the last 10,000 years), now preserved in the Earth’s crust. Most organisms never become fossils, but instead decompose after death, and any hard parts are broken into tiny fragments. In order to fossilize, an organism must be buried quickly before it is destroyed by weathering, decomposed, or eaten by other organisms. This is why fossils are found almost exclusively in sediment and sedimentary rocks. Igneous rocks, which form from cooling magma or lava, and metamorphic rocks, which have been altered by heat and pressure, are unlikely to contain fossils (but may, under special circumstances). Different fossils are found in different regions because of the presence of rocks deposited at different times and in a variety of environments. Since rapid burial in sediment is important for the formation of fossils, many fossils are from marine environments, where sediments are more likely to accumulate.
Fossils come in many types. Those that consist of an actual part of an organism, such as a bone, shell, or leaf, are known as body fossils; those that record the actions of organisms, such as footprints and burrows, are called trace fossils. Body fossils may be preserved in a number of ways. These include preservation of the original mineral skeleton of an organism, mineral replacement (chemical replacement of the material making up a shell by a more stable mineral), recrystallization (replacement by a different crystal form of the same chemical compound), permineralization (filling of empty spaces in a bone or shell by minerals), and molds and casts, which show impressions of the exterior or interior of a shell. Chemical fossils are chemicals produced by an organism that leave behind an identifiable trace in the geologic record, and it is these fossils that provide some of the oldest evidence for life on Earth.
Lagerstätten
The "soft" tissues of an organism, such as skin, muscles, and internal organs, are typically not preserved as fossils. Exceptions to this rule occur when conditions favor rapid burial and mineralization or very slow decay. The absence of oxygen and limited disruption of the sediment by burrowing are both important for limiting decay in those deposits where soft tissues are preserved. The Southwestern states contain several examples of such exceptional preservation, also called Lagerstätten, including trilobites and other marine animals preserved in Utah's Cambrian shales, and the Cenozoic insects and plants preserved at Florissant, Colorado.
Discovering Ancient Environments
The kinds of animals and plants living in a particular place depend on the local environment. The fossil record preserves not only fossil organisms, but also evidence of what their environments were like. By studying the geological and biological information recorded in a rock that contains a fossil, scientists can determine some aspects of the paleoenvironment.
Grain size and composition of the rock can tell us what type of sediment surface the animal lived on, what the water flow was like, and whether the sediment was transported in a current. Grain size also tells us about the clarity of the water. Fine-grained rocks such as shales are made of tiny particles of silt or clay that easily remain suspended in water. Thus, a fossil found in shale might have lived in muddy or very quiet water. Filter-feeding organisms, such as clams or corals, are not usually found in muddy water because the suspended sediment can clog their filters.
Sedimentary structures, such as asymmetrical ripple marks and cross-beds, can indicate that the organism lived in moving water. Mud cracks or symmetrical ripples are characteristic of shoreline or intertidal environments.
Broken shells or concentrated layers of shells may indicate transportation and accumulation by waves or currents.
Color of the rock may indicate the amount of oxygen in the water. If there is not enough oxygen in the water, organic material (carbon) in sediments will not decompose, and the rock formed will be dark gray or black in color.
Paleontologists use fossils as a record of the history of life. They tell us that an incredible multitude of organisms lived prior to the species that we see on Earth today; that most species that ever lived have become extinct; and that living things have changed through evolution over time, from one species into another, and adapted to changing environments. Fossilized organisms are also extremely useful in understanding the ancient environment that existed when they were alive. The study of the relationships of fossil organisms to one another and their environment is called paleoecology.
Some of the most useful index fossils are hard-shelled organisms that were once part of the marine plankton.
Fossils provide the most important tool for dating the rocks in which they are preserved. Because species only exist for a certain amount of time before going extinct, their fossils only occur in rocks of a certain age. The relative age of such fossils is determined by their order in the stacks of layered rocks that make up the stratigraphic record (older rocks are on the bottom and younger rocks on the top—a principle called superposition). Such fossils are known as index fossils. The most useful index fossils are abundant, widely distributed, easy to recognize, and occur only during a narrow time span. This use of fossils to determine relative age in geology is called biostratigraphy. The geologic time scale is in part based on sequences of fossils correlated from around the world.
Ancient Biodiversity
Since life began on Earth more than 3.7 billion years ago, it has continuously grown more abundant and diverse. It wasn’t until the beginning of the Cambrian period, around 541 million years ago, that complex life—living things with cells that are differentiated for different tasks—became predominant. This event at the beginning of the Cambrian, called the Cambrian Explosion, resulted in the emergence of most major animal phyla. The diversity of life has generally increased through time since then. Measurements of the number of different kinds of organisms—for example, estimating the number of species alive at a given time—are used when attempting to describe Earth’s biodiversity. With a few exceptions, the rate at which new species evolve is significantly greater than the rate of extinction.
Most species have a lifespan of several million years; rarely do species exist longer than 10 million years. The extinction of a species is a normal event in the history of life. There are, however, intervals of time during which extinction rates are unusually high, in some cases at a rate of 10 or 100 times the normal pace. These intervals are known as mass extinctions. There were five particularly devastating mass extinctions in geologic history (Figure 3.1), and these specific events have helped to shape life through time. Unfortunately, this is not just a phenomenon of the past—it is estimated that the extinction rate on Earth right now may be as much as 1000 times higher than normal, due mostly to human activity, and that we are currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction event.
Figure 3.1. The history of life in relation to global and regional geological events and the fossil record of the Southwestern US. (Time scale is not to scale).
Fossils of the Southwestern US
The rocks of the Southwest showcase an excellent fossil record, as the area's sparse vegetation affords extensive rock exposures. A large proportion of these exposed rocks are sedimentary and fossil-bearing, preserving a tremendous variety of fossils and providing glimpses of what life was like over the last 1.2 billion years. Fossils can be found in nearly every part of the Southwest, representing most major categories of organisms and most periods of geologic time. The history of life in the Southwest has been pieced together from the fossil record and different layers of rock in many different areas. Particular fossil organisms lived only in certain environments, and these changing environments did not exist continuously through time, nor were they all necessarily preserved in the rock record. Nowhere in the Southwest (or anywhere) is a complete record of rock from every period preserved. Not all sediment ends up as rock, and likewise, rock that formed long ago may have been eroded away. Not all organisms are preserved as fossils, and rocks that contain fossils may have been destroyed by erosion, or they may still be buried well below the current surface of the Earth, out of sight from paleontologists.
In the remainder of this chapter, we will highlight the major types of fossils present in most of the geologic periods represented by rocks in each state. The references at the end of the chapter should be consulted for details, especially for identifying particular fossils you might find.
