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Fossils and the Geologic Column EssayStarting from the 18th Century, scientist had been able to provide methods of knowing the worlds prehistory. One of this is the drop of fossils to determine the relative age of strata. Fossils are the remains of living beingnesss that had lived long term ago while strata are the geological divisions each made forbidden of contiguous layers that exhibits consistent characteristics. Comparing the sets of fossils that make up within different localities gives a hint for geologist whether the layers concerned are of the same strata or not. The relative age of the localities could be base on the fossils relative age that is then determined through carbon dating. As scientist had established that fossils of a certain organism had lived within a certain span of time, it is then compared to other organism which would be also found out to have lived within that same time span. Their similarities would be drawn out that made possible the broader division of the Earths history into Eras namely the Cenozoic Era or the Age of novel life, Mesozoic Era or the Age of the Medieval Life, and the Palaeozoic Era or the Age of the Ancient Life.Each of them would be further divided into Periods, which is then based on the disturbances that had been theorized to shape the earths crust. The time span that is believed that no fossils can be found out is called the Precambrian Period. In analyzing figure 3. 6, we could tell that the threesome localities though bordered many kilometers apart, have fossil assemblages because almost all of them have Dictyoclostus americanus from the Pennsylvanian Period, Prolecanites gurleyi from Mississippian Period, Palmatolepus unicornis from Devonian Period and Bathyurus extans from Ordovian Period.This states that the three localities had been for some time span or effect had been part of the earths outer crust. Though locality 3 had Stratum D and Prolecanites gurleyi missing, this that not means that locality 3 does not exist as part of the earths crust because either stratum D was never deposited there or it may had been there but then removed through erosion. The boundary between C and E then would be a disconformity.References Index Fossils. Retrieved June 6, 2008 from http//pubs. usgs. gov/gip/geotime/fossils. html