Day 9-Fossils

Today we discussed the first few chapters of Your Inner Fish. Chapter 1 discussed how fossils are formed, and found. We learned that the older fossils are found deeper in the ground and the younger ones are closer to the surface. We also discussed how the location that fossils are found today, may not have been the same millions of years ago. The example was Tiktaalik, a transitional fossil (meaning that it was a species that was evolving, and in this case from marine animals to land animals). This fossil lived somewhere below the equator, but due to continental drifts, it is found today somewhere in northern Canada. Chapter 2 talked about homologies, which are the same bones in different animals. For example, an arm bone on a human is a homology of a wing bone for a bird. To conclude class we took a trip to the museum to see the actual model of Tiktaalik.