January Nature Net News - Fossil Frenzy
"When out fossil hunting, it is very easy to forget that rather than telling you how the creatures lived, the remains you find indicate only where they became fossilized." Richard E. Leakey Dear Reader, I was raised by a duo consisting of a rockhound and a naturalist. My parents went rock collecting for their honeymoon, and the old museum case in the living room is full of many of their souvenirs. I remember countless hours examining minerals and fossils with my father, enthralled as he would highlight the delicate bones of a skeletal fish, trace the veins of a fossilized fern, or rub our fingers over the bumpy shell of trilobite. It was a highlight of my childhood. Fossils help us learn about conditions of the past and the path that ancestral creatures took to evolve to the animals we know and love today. For example, fossil records helped scientists determine that the Tyrannosaurus Rex is likely related to today's living chickens. So we're eating the descendants of...