How does it come to fossilizations? 


fossilizationsThe left picture shows a wall of the gorge of Bottachione, like in other gorges. We are able to recognize layers of stones. These layers are something like a geological clock. Every layer stands for a certain period of time. The top of the layers is made of young material, which has sedimented later in time (now). When new layers sedimented on the top of the older layers the pressure increases and leads to a stonification of previosly soft material. Counting the layers from the top of the earth surface therefore allows an esitmation of the age of a specific layer, similar to esitmating the age of trees by counting the age rings. When stonification of animals are found in some layers, we can roughly esitmate their age by counting the layers above the stonification.

If an animal died in the past, the soft parts started to admister. The hard bones were covered in the run of the time by more and more earth material. The bones started to stonify, due to the increasing pressure and incoming minerals.

Comparing the ages of all dinosaur fossil findings, it was impressive to see that no dinosaurs were found in layers younger than the border between creaceous and tertiary period. So: What caused the sudden disappearance of nearly all dinosaurs, nearly at the same time all over the world?

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