Inside the Smithsonian's Fossil Prep Lab with Michelle Pinsdorf

Meet Michelle Pinsdorf, fossil preparator at the National Museum of Natural History. Have you ever wondered how scientists decipher the information encrypted in fossils? Every fossil is a time capsule containing a record of events that happened on Earth thousands or millions of years ago. Michelle cleans and prepares fossils to better expose them for study and display. See how she carefully preserves fossils to maintain their value far into the future.
This program originally aired on March 9, 2017, as part of the Smithsonian Science How webcast series. Smithsonian Science How brings natural history science and research to middle-school students nationwide. For standards alignment and free teaching resources, visit: qrius.si.edu/teachers/online/...

[@nationalmuseumofnaturalhistory]

Thanks for your question! Here's a response from Michelle Pinsdorf, the fossil preparator featured in this video: The short answer is yes, sometimes! Vertebrate and invertebrate creatures share habitats in the modern day so we would expect to find fossilized remains together unless something about how the fossils were originally deposited and preserved gets in the way. For example, it is common to find vertebrate fossils in riverbed or ocean floor deposits, with the shells of invertebrate snails, clams, etc. that were living in the sediments the vertebrate bones were buried in. We would expect to find animals and plants inhabiting the same environment to be preserved together. For example, remains of fossil leaves along with the insects that were feeding on those leaves. When we find a strange exception, such as a land animal preserved in a deposit of ocean floor sediment, there is evidence of an explanation for that, such as a carcass that was washed out from land by a flood and floated into the deep ocean before sinking to the bottom to be buried. We find these explanations by observing modern day remains of animals and plants, and looking for clues in the geologic record to explain the process of fossilization and preservation of ancient remains. That branch of science is called ‘taphonomy’. To learn more about taphonomy research happening here at the National Museum of Natural History, visit naturalhistory.si.edu/ete/ETE_People_Behrensmeyer.html.

[@Palaiopaido]

Have you ever found vertebrate fossils that where with invertebrate ones ?