Re: what is a fossil

[Bettyc <Bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

Andrea Spreafico wrote:
> I think that a dead fish on the beach is a fossil only in a too much wide
> sense. I do prefer the following definition: everything remains of animal
> and vegetal organisms that lived in the past geological times, included
> tracks of their activity, mantained up today because of physical-chemical
> processes called "fossilization".

then this might not include some of our own extinct hominid ancestors?
The need to have them in "past geological times"

What of hybrids or cladistic descendants of things where the last parent
is now extinct but this is still recent?
If you found a quagga (perhaps mummified in the Sahara) would this be a
fossil?
If not a fossil then what would you clasify the remains as?
Perhaps in terms of archeological nomenclature rather than GEOLOGICAL?
-- 
           Betty Cunningham  
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