Fossils: A Story of the Rocks and Their Record of Prehistoric Life

By Harvey C. Markman Curator of Geology and Paleontology
Cover Design and Murals by Mary Chilton Gray
DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Popular Series No. 3 Alfred M. Bailey, Editor
Third Edition, Reprinted October 1, 1954
At Work on a Dinosaur Skeleton
In the recent growth of knowledge there has been rapid progress in two directions. The commercial exploitation of natural resources, being fundamental to modern civilization, attracts a liberal share of the talents and energies of workers trained for the industrial professions. A second trend has specialized in the further development of the sciences which are characteristic of our time. Such activities, in the natural history field, deal largely with the refinements of exact definition, nomenclature and classification, all of which means little or nothing to the layman who is otherwise engaged.
For the latter, however, there is a quality of interest which may be described as a wholesome curiosity about what has happened, how it happened, how we know it happened, and what it may signify to one who is neither industrialist nor scientist. This booklet is intended for the many who feel that there is more to be obtained from a natural history museum than an occasional glimpse of a bewildering “marvel.” In addition to being a guide to fossil exhibits it supplies parts of a great story which specimens alone can not relate.
All that is known of the extinct plants and animals which inhabited the earth before man began the practice of recording his observations has been obtained from a study of the rocks. The few possible exceptions to this rule, in which animal and plant remains have been preserved by freezing or drying, are so unusual as to be hardly worth mentioning.
Explanation of this is that plant and animal tissues quickly decay under ordinary conditions when life ceases. Unless protected from destructive agencies which are especially active at the surface of the ground, even the heavier bones of animals and the large trunks of fallen trees will soon crumble into shapeless masses. The usual method employed by nature to prepare a fossil specimen is so closely related to the natural process of rock making that a little knowledge of that subject will be necessary in order to know what fossils are and how they are preserved for so long a time.