Don Gross  age ll: of Winchesters. Mass

Are fossils helpful?

Maybe you have called an old style auto a fossil. You are joking because it is out of a bygone age. But you are not quite correct. Fossils are the remains of things from a bygone agep but they must come from things that once lived w plants or animals.. no matter how smalls So the old auto is not strictly a fossil. But it could never have been made or run without the help of fossils. Nor could the snaziest modern car be made or run without the help of fossils that lived long long ago.

Fossils are needed to make the iron and steel that go into the metal parts of the car. For limestone is needed to smelt iron from its ores. And limestone is formed from the shells of tiny sea creatures that lived millions of years ago. Oil is needed to grease the car's machinery. Gas is needed to make it go. Both these items are made from the remains of little plants and animals that fossilized into petroleum. Additional fossilizing of petroleum forms asphalt. We use it to pave some of the highways on which our fossil‑run cars ride.

The wheels of the Machine Age would stop without the help of fossils. We tend to think of fossils as only the massive bones of the dinosaurs  which they are. These and other bones help us to unfold the long history of the earth„ They show us the creatures who lived here before us. Experts use them to date the rocks in which they are found. But the made‑over and mashed remains of the little creatures help most with our everyday chores. They: too are fossils.. even though their original forms are changed past recognizing.

Certain of these little fossils changed the soil and rocks in which they lived. They left behind chemicals which made the soil rich„ They formed the food on which modern plants live. Plant fossils whole forests of them  made peat and coal. Coke is made from coal. And coke is used to run furnaces and make household gas and electricity. Natural gas comes from the petroleum fossils. Without these fossils our fuel supply would be very low indeed

These are but a few of the uses of fossilized materials. Coal tar comes from coal. We use it to make countless things dyes. medicines and many plastics to name but a few. The lead in your pencil was formed from fossils. It is graphite and graphite forms from coal. The chalk for the blackboard is formed from the fossilized remains of little shell builders.

And there was once a fossil who caught a modern culprit. New York State needed a highway. A certain contractor won the job because of his fine rock specimens.  But the state refused to pay him when the job was done. The rock he used was inferior to the specimens. Little did he know there was a fossil in those specimens. Experts were able to date that fine rock„ No Mr. Contractors they said. You did not get this specimen from the quarries you used to make our road for they have no rock that was made when this fossil lived and died. The courts agreed with the little fossil who proved that the state had been cheated.