laws of nature...

I would like to start with a question.

How is it, in the case of fossils, that the dead animal completely disintegrates (bones etc.) but the dirt it left the impression in keeps the shape and becomes completely solid. Wouldn't it make more sense since the dirt I assume is wet when it takes the imprint that since the carcass is more solid initially, the the dirt would lose the shape and the carcass remains intact then the other way around?

Please get back to me and let me know how this is explained.
 
abuyusufalshafii said:
How is it, in the case of fossils, that the dead animal completely disintegrates (bones etc.) but the dirt it left the impression in keeps the shape and becomes completely solid. Wouldn't it make more sense since the dirt I assume is wet when it takes the imprint that since the carcass is more solid initially, the the dirt would lose the shape and the carcass remains intact then the other way around?
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What happens is that, in some rare cases, an animal or leaf -- or even an entire forest -- is covered by a layer of mud or earth or sand that over long geological aeons is compressed by earth forces to become shale or sandstone, with the animal or plant still encased. The cells of wood and bone are replaced by minerals -- and they become stone -- replicating the cellular structure exactly.

There are other methods of fossilization such as insects preserved in amber or mammoths in permafrost -- also moulds and casts like fossilized shells that are eventually filled with a mineral.

There are fossilized shells found on top of sandstone mountains. It means the creatures died and sank to the ocean floor where they were buried in sand. Over millions of years the sand was compressed to become stone, and the shells were replaced by stone, and then pushed up by earth forces to become mountains.

And the mountains are gradually eroding again and being carried grain by grain into rivers, that flow eventually to the sea, and the sand from the mountain falls again to the ocean floor.

I've found an article that explains it in simple terms
How Fossils Are Created

One thing certain is that the process takes many hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Lebanese Amber is 125-135 million years old. Another certain fact is that fossilization is rare -- it happens to only a very few samples. Not every form of life laid down fossils.

"The preservation of an intact skeleton with the bones in the relative positions they had in life requires remarkable circumstances, such as burial in volcanic ash, burial in aeolian sand due to the sudden slumping of a sand dune, burial in a mudslide, burial by a turbidity current, and so forth. The mineralization of soft parts is even less common and is seen only in exceptionally rare chemical and biological conditions"
 
Thank you for your answer.

I'll have to re-read it a few times to make sure I understand it fully.

God be with you (or Allah ma'ak as we say in 'arabic).
 
I'm semi conversant but need a lot more vocab.

I have another question as well:

Why does the o-zone layer appear to be blue from the ground but is transparent from above?

Thanks for your help.
 
abuyusufalshafii said:
Why does the o-zone layer appear to be blue from the ground but is transparent from above?
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Why is the sky blue?
The air scatters sunlight, mostly in the blue spectrum, so the sky looks blue.

There has to be enough depth of air for the scattering to be visible. The air doesn't look blue when you're looking at a house across the street, or looking down from an aeroplane

But it does look blue from high enough above too:

blue earth.jpg
 
There are fossilized teeth of a shark that was larger than great whites (that's how megalodon was discovered.)

And there were a few fossilized bones of a snake that were discovered in a South American (strip) mine that turned out to belong to Titanoboa (a snake that reached a length of about 48-feet, give or take.)

Oh, and shortfaced bears, camels, American lions, American cheetahs, horses, dire wolves, mammoths, giant sloths and other fauna that no longer live (the anciencient horses on the North American continent were long gone before the Conquistadores brought their horses over.)

I can list other species if anyone's interested.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
You asked for them!

1) Daeadon (aka hee pig)
2) Sabertooth cat
3) Scimitartooth cat (no, not the same!)
4) Irish elk
5) Mastadon
6) Diploticus
7) Elephant bird (a relative to the kiwi bird)
8) Tasmanian tiger
9) Amphicyonids (aka bear dogs)
10) Spinosaurs
11) Moa birds
12) Archelon (an extinct family of turtles)
13) Hadrosaurs (aka duckbilled dinosaurs)
14) Dodo birds

Shall I continue...? Anyway, you can research these animals if/when you have time.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
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Thank you, I have another question as well just trying to clear up a misconception:

Assuming the earth is a globe, why do planes flying straight not gradually get higher and higher off of the ground?
 
abuyusufalshafii said:
Assuming the earth is a globe, why do planes flying straight not gradually get higher and higher off of the ground?
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An aeroplane flies at a set altitude above the ground. Aircraft have to apply for permission to fly and log their routes in advance, so that air traffic control can avoid accidents. An aeroplane is really very tiny compared to the size of the earth. Imagine an ant on a big hot-air balloon -- the canvas looks flat to the ant, until it's high enough above the surface of the balloon to see the curvature.

An aircraft above the ground is much, much, MUCH smaller than an ant in comparison. A commercial aircraft flies at around 39 thousand feet -- about eight miles high. However the Earth's atmosphere stretches from the surface of the planet up to as far as 6,214 miles. After that, the atmosphere blends into space.

The earth is very, very big. Atlanta City is just a tiny dot on the map of America, let alone the whole earth --and there are a lot of aeroplanes.

Atlanta.png
 
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Thank you for all your replies, I have one last question for now, after which I will review all the responses and this one always confused me:
The things we call planets, from the ground look just like stars and how is it that they appear as light from the ground, yet the closer you get to them the darker and colder they get when sources of light. as we know get lighter and hotter from up close? (referring to Saturn, Venus, Jupiter etc.).
 
abuyusufalshafii said:
Thank you for all your replies, I have one last question for now, after which I will review all the responses and this one always confused me:
The things we call planets, from the ground look just like stars and how is it that they appear as light from the ground, yet the closer you get to them the darker and colder they get when sources of light. as we know get lighter and hotter from up close? (referring to Saturn, Venus, Jupiter etc.).
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It's the same reason that the moon "shines" at certain times; they're reflecting our sun back at us. If we left Earth for the moon or any other planet/moon, the same phenomenon would occur..

Am I making sense? :kitty:

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
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