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A fossil is any natural evidence of prehistoric life that provides some idea of the size, shape, or form of the organism. A fossil need not be a whole animal or plant; broken fragments or naturally separated pieces are also fossils, as are tracks made where an organism walked, crawled, or burrowed. Figure 2.
- Bob Strauss
- Fedexia. If the name Fedexia strikes you as a bit odd, that's because this 2-foot-long, 5-pound prehistoric amphibian was discovered near a Federal Express depot at Pittsburgh International Airport.
- Rutiodon. Rutiodon, the "wrinkle tooth," was a late Triassic phytosaur, a family of prehistoric reptiles that superficially resembled crocodiles. At about 8 feet long and 300 pounds, Rutiodon would have been one of the apex predators of its ecosystem, which ranged across the Eastern seaboard (specimens have been discovered in New Jersey and North Carolina, as well as Pennsylvania).
- Hynerpeton. Long considered to be the first true amphibian (an honor to which it may or may not be entitled), Hynerpeton retained some features reminiscent of the lobe-finned fish (and earlier tetrapods) from which it evolved, including multiple-toed feet and a noticeable fin on its tail.
- Hypsognathus. The plant-eating Hypsognathus ("high jaw") was one of the few anapsid reptiles to survive into the Triassic period from the preceding Permian; most of these prehistoric reptiles, which were characterized by the lack of certain holes in their skulls, went extinct about 250 million years ago.
Home. Essays. Dinosaurs and Paleontology (Study of Fossils and Prehistoric Life) By Austin Wisser. The Philadelphia area has played a major part in paleontology, the study of past life through fossils, yielding discoveries that have helped to illuminate millions of years of existence.
By the late 1800s Pennsylvania was the site of formal scientific investigation of fossils. Around this time Hadrosaurus foulkii of neighboring New Jersey became the first mounted dinosaur skeleton exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
Mar 26, 2019 · By: Clint. Common Fossils of Pennsylvania is an excellent guide if you are looking for fossils in Pennsylvania. Donald M. Hoskins wrote it for the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. This book is the fourth series of this publication. You can download a digital copy using the link below.
Pennsylvanian fossils are found in many rock units throughout the midcontinent. These rock units have been temporally correlated across several states. The correlations for some states are extremely detailed, between Kansas and Missouri, for example, while some are correlated using coarser timescales, e.g., Oklahoma.
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