Q.

22
A fault is a break in the rocks that make up the Earths crust, along which rocks on
either side have moved past each other.

Not every crack in the ground is a fault. What defines a fault is the movement of the
rock on either side. When that movement is sudden, the released energy causes an
earthquake. Some faults are tiny, but others are part of great fault systems along
which rocks have slid past each other for hundreds of miles. These fault systems are
the boundaries of the huge plates that make up the Earth's crust. In the San
Francisco Bay region, the Quaternary-active faults are part of the boundary between
the Pacific and North American plates.
Q.21
A fossil is the naturally preserved remains or traces of animals or plants that lived
in the geologic past. There are two main types of fossils; body and trace. Body
fossils include the remains of organisms that were once living and trace fossils are
the signs that organisms were present (i.e. footprints, tracks, trails, and burrows).
The objective of this lab is to understand the processes that preserve organisms in
the fossil record, and to appreciate the biological information that can be garnered
from fossils. You will also learn the major types of preservation. Since some
information is always lost during preservation, you should think particularly about
what each type of preservation tells us about the once-living organism.

The fate of most organic material produced by living systems is to be decomposed

to carbon dioxide and water, and recycled into the biosphere. The circulation of
elements through biogeochemical cycles indicates that decomposition is, indeed,
efficient; however the presence of organic material in sedimentary rocks (e.g., coal,
petroleum, dispersed organic matter, and fossils) shows that some organic matteror its traces-escapes these cycles to be preserved in the rock record. Paleontology
relies on this preserved material-fossils-as evidence of past life. In the early history
of modern paleontology, fossils were thought of mostly as static parts of the rock
record. This fostered description and classification as the main activities of scientific
paleontologists. However, a shift in emphasis to thinking of fossils as "once-living
organisms" gave paleontology a more biological flair and, more importantly, opened
a new world of research questions. Today, well-trained paleontologists will have
extensive backgrounds in both the geological and biological sciences.

Organisms become fossilized in a variety of ways. Each type of preservation carries

different information about the once-living organism. Thus, an appreciation of fossils
requires that one understand the processes of fossilization, and how each type of
preservation may influence our view of the organism that produced the fossil.