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Occurrence of fossils in rocks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

J. Thomas Dutro Jr.
J. Thomas Dutro Jr.*
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. 20560
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Extract

In the purest sense, all paleontology begins with collecting fossils in the field. The field is a generic term that includes any place where interesting rocks crop out at the earth's surface. What makes those rocks interesting depends on many things, frequently related to making a geologic map of an area and ultimately unravelling its geologic history. The geologist uses superposition of strata to get started with the task, but sooner or later one wants to know the ages of the formations and their correlation with similar rocks in the next county, state or exotic tectonic terrane. Fossils are the answer.

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General
Information
The Paleontological Society Special Publications , Volume 4: Paleotechniques , 1989 , pp. 6 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Paleontological Society 

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References

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