What Makes Fossils?
A fossil is made when a plant or animal gets buried very quickly in wet dirt and sand. When animals or plants are under many layers, their bodies are protected from things that would normally break down their bodies or eat them, like other animals and bacteria. Being trapped in all those layers of mud preserves the plant or animal. This happens most easily during a natural catastrophe like a flood, mud slide, or earthquake. The hard parts of animals (such as bones, teeth, and shells) that get trapped in these layers of mud are slowly replaced with minerals from the mud, which turn them into a hard material, very similar to rock. A fossil is formed in the same shape as the hard part of the animal, like a tooth or bone. The soft parts of plants or animals, such as the scales of a fish or the leaves of a plant, sometimes leave a little bit of color in the rock before they eventually break down into nothing. Soft things that turn into fossils usually leave an imprint of their shape as they
