Fossils tell us a story about life

Fossils are a part of geologic time, which can be a hard concept to grasp. We say that dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago, but do we really even understand just how long is a million years?

The currently accepted age of the earth is 4.6 billion years. That is 4 billion, 6 hundred million. That is a 4,  then a 6, followed by 8 zeros – a ten digit number. When it’s all written out, it looks like this: 4,600,000,000.  Yet, no matter how many different ways I try to convey the grandness of the age of the Earth verbally, it still just sounds like a really big number.

Here at The Fossil Cartel, we sell a number of fossils from all over the world spanning many different time periods, and all kinds of varieties of species. We like to provide our customers with information about the specimens and fossils they purchase, and in the case of a fossil that includes the age of the fossil. I chose just a couple of our most popular fossils to place on the time line, in order to get an idea of where they fall in geologic time.

Fish Fossils

The Green River Formation in Wyoming yields many many fish fossils. These fish became fossils approximately 40 million years ago. On the time line rope, that is a mere four feet from present day. If you were to walk 460 feet from The Fossil Cartel located at 333 SW Taylor Ave. to Pioneer Place (the mall downtown), that would be about 2 blocks along SW 4th.

Trilobites

Trilobites flourished during the Devonian period. But early species of trilobites lived starting 500 million years ago. On the rope, that would still be only 50 feet away from present day, or less than 1/9 of the way in geologic time!

Come let us show you our wonderful collection of fossils for sale!