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An Indian bead in Indiana gravel. Indian bead is a colloquial American term for a fossilized stem segment of a columnal crinoid, a marine echinoderm of the class Crinoidea. . The fossils, generally a centimeter or less in diameter, tend to be cylindrical with a small hole (either open or filled) along the axis and can resemble unstrung be
Index fossils must have a short vertical range, wide geographic distribution and rapid evolutionary trends. Another term, "zone fossil", is used when the fossil has all the characters stated above except wide geographical distribution; thus, they correlate the surrounding rock to a biozone rather than a specific time period.
For differently-shaped objects (e. g., stars and horseshoes), nanolith is being used. Some other authors, however, use coccolith in a broader sense for all calcareous nanofossils; nannoplankton is sometimes used to identify the living organisms, with nannofossils referring to the now-extinct species.
They are valuable as index fossils. The ancient Egyptians used nummulite shells as coins and the pyramids were constructed using limestone that contained nummulites. [3] [6] It is not surprising then that the name Nummulites is a diminutive form of the Latin nummulus 'little coin', a reference to their shape. [7]
Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many still collect fossils and study fossils as amateurs.
In trace fossil nomenclature a Latin binomial name is used, just as in animal and plant taxonomy, with a genus and specific epithet. However, the binomial names are not linked to an organism, but rather just a trace fossil. This is due to the rarity of association between a trace fossil and a specific organism or group of organisms.
Like other fossils, coprolites have had much of their original composition replaced by mineral deposits such as silicates and calcium carbonates. Paleofeces, on the other hand, retain much of their original organic composition and can be reconstituted to determine their original chemical properties, though in practice the term coprolite is also ...
Most of the generic names in this list come from Jack Sepkoski's 2002 compendium of marine fossil genera, which can be corroborated by other sources such as Part L, Ammonoidea, in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Additional generic names included come from the Treatise or various peer review scientific journals.