The fossil record helps paleontologists, archaeologists, and geologists place important events and species in the appropriate geologic era. It is based on the Law of Superposition which states that in undisturbed rock sequences the bottom layers are older than the top layers.
Key Points. Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the past. Fossils are important evidence for evolution because they show that life on earth was once different from life found on earth today.
What does the presenter believe the actual fossil record reveals about complexity? Complex at the bottom and complex at the top. What does the presenter state is true of transitional fossils from the Precambrian to the Cambrian? Transitional fossils are absent.
The fossil record, however, is quite incomplete. Here's one major reason why: Sediment has to cover an organism's remains in order for the long fossilization process to begin. Most organisms decompose before this can happen.
fossil record. information about past life, including the structure of organisms, what they ate, what ate them, in what environment they lived, and the order in which they lived. extinct.
The fossil record supports evolution by showing the changes in different species over time. Explain how animals that live in very different climates can have a common ancestor. Animals that live in very different environments can definitely have a common ancestor. This can happen because of evolution.
Fossils also help scientists infer how Earth's surface has changed. Fossils are clues to what past environments were like. Most fossils form when living things die and are buried by sediments. The sediments slowly harden into rock and preserve the shapes of the organisms.
Fossils are formed in many different ways, but most are formed when a living organism (such as a plant or animal) dies and is quickly buried by sediment (such as mud, sand or volcanic ash).
Explanation: Many fossil records are incomplete because some animals were soft bodied or soft tissue which decays quickly. Also, due to movement of tectonic plates, fossils are destroyed so there are many new fossilised organisms which are destroyed and we don't know about them.
The fossil record is incomplete. Of the small proportion of organisms preserved as fossils, only a tiny fraction have been recovered and studied by paleontologists. In some cases the succession of forms over time has been reconstructed in detail.
The fossil record is incomplete because most organisms never became fossils. And, many fossils have yet to be discovered. Scientists know more about organisms that had hard body parts rather than a soft body because hard body organisms favored fossilization.
Since then, fossils have been considered among the most important evidence for biological evolution,” Hannisdal explains. However, in his book on the origin of species, Darwin argued that the fossil record was far too incomplete to give a reliable picture of evolution.