Unlike buried treasure and some min

Unlike buried treasure and some minerals, fossils are usually not valuable in themselves. However,
most of the fossils you find will be of greatest value to you. They will help you learn much about the
geologic history of the earth and its inhabitants.
If it were not for fossils, we would have no way of knowing about the animals that once roamed the
earth or that once crawled on the bottom of the ancient seas. In fact, we would not even know for sure
that there were once seas in some regions if it were not for the many fossils of sea animals that we
find there.
You can look at some fossils and see for yourself the shape of the ancient animals. Even if you
collect only bits of one kind of fossil, you may still be able to tell what it looked like. Making sense
out of fossil bits is a little like recognising the picture and even use your imagination to fill in the
missing details. The habits of ancient sea animals are not so easy to determine. Therefore, scientists study the structure and the habits of similar living animals to learn what the ancient ones must have been like. There are something, however, that neither the study of fossils nor the study of living animals can tell us. For example, no one knows what color most ancient sea animals were. Also,
since the soft part disappeared soon after death, many details of their internal structure are unknown.
So the pictures of ancient creatures (as well as dinosaurs) are what scientists think the animals
looked like. Reconstructing the life of an ancient sea animal on the basis of fossil evidence and
characteristics of similar living animals is a little like relying on circumstantial evidence in court