Why is it hard to interpret fossils?

Question

Why is it hard to interpret fossils?

Answer 1

It really is not that difficult.  

You simply have to be educated broadly in the hard sciences - training in historical geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, organic geochemistry, ecology, evolutionary biology to start with.  

Paleontology will teach you the basic identifications, and from thence you can begin to understand the ecological systems of which the fossilized animals and plants were a part, as well as the processes of the fossil's formation.  

It's not for everybody, or even most, but it is very do-able - just takes a lot of time to learn what you're looking at.

Answer 2

Fossils are fairly oddball. First the critter has to die, then get quickly buried. Second the burial needs to be conducive to protecting the remains. Then the bones need to slowly be replaced by minerals. Finally after all that, erosion has to uncover the fossil in time for someone to find it. Most of the time, after all that time and effort, the fossil is incomplete and missing stuff.

A fossil is a small slice of a critter. Was this one typical of it's kind? What sort of place did it live in? A fossil can't even tell you what the skin color was.

Answer 3

Interpreting is the only thing we can do. There are not many facts that a fossil gives us. All we know for certain is that something died and was buried in that spot. We don't know how it died, when it died, or anything else.