Fossils...?

Question

Ok, this might sound stupid, but how can we tell things like if a creature had hair from fossils we find?

Answer 1

People who claim that fossil evidence cannot indicate that a creature had hair do not know what they are talking about.

The same is true of soft tissue.  Some fossils DO show that some ancient creatures had soft tissue.

Here's how it works.  Some fossils are not the remains of bones, but rather imprints made in rock.  These imprints formed when the animals died and their corpses were absorbed by soft earth.  If the soft earth provided a hermetic seal for the corpses, they did not decompose before the earth began to harden.  Very slowly, those corpses did decompose; but they left imprints behind. It is the imprints that show the presence of hair and soft tissue, not the actual presence of the hair and soft tissues.

This is how archaeologists know that some dinosaurs and ancient birds had feathers; they can actually see the imprints of the feathers in the "imprint fossils".

Check out this Wikipedia article.  It's about a fossilized dinosaur/bird hybrid which shows imprints of feathers.  There are photos showing the imprints.  They are very clear and obviously made by feathers.

There is also evidence of soft tissue in this animal.  You can see the body outline in the fossil.

Similarly, other such imprints show the imprints of hair.  It all depends on which animal had which features.

It's a neat article.  Check it out!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopter...

Hope that clears things up.

Big Al Mintaka

Answer 2

Believe it or not, some fossils are so detailed that they even show feathers.

Answer 3

We can't.  Hair fibers don't fossilize.  Neither does soft tissue.  Anatomists can make some good guesses from fossilized bone based on similarity-- if a skeleton is very similar to skeletons of modern mammals, for example, the odds are pretty good that the extinct animal was also a mammal, and since modern mammals have hair, it's likely that this animal had hair when it was alive.  Dinosaur skeletons most closely resemble those of modern reptiles like crocodiles and turtles, so we assume that they had other reptilian characteristics.  But it's really all conjecture.

Answer 4

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah Blah, and Blah =  SHH,  found the answer to that in my Dictionary under " F ".

Answer 5

you can't unless there's fossilized hair.  Which can sometimes happen, though it's rare.

Answer 6

Fossilized bone can't give you this, but a correlation of fossils including one where skin patterns have been retained in mud or similar gives you this type of information (though I'm not personally familiar with hair, per se, being found.)