What Are The Odds You'll Become A Fossil?
6/17/202639 min
Most living things vanish without a trace. A select few become fossils. But how?
In this episode of Field Notes Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce's Michael Stevens dig into the unlikely process that turns bone into stone.
From prehistoric seas hidden beneath Kansas to fossils mistaken for mythical creatures, they follow the clues that reveal Earth's deep past.
Along the way they uncover the lost landscape of Doggerland, investigate creatures that survive without sunlight, and tackle listener questions about radioactive waste, volcanoes, and some surprisingly persistent scientific myths.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHannah Fry· Host0:01
Welcome to The Rest is Science. I'm Hannah Fry.
Michael Stevens· Host0:03
And I'm Michael Stevens.
Hannah Fry· Host0:04
And, uh, it's field notes today, which means one of us brought an object, and, uh, I'm calling this series Hannah's Boring Rocks. Um- Ooh, another episode of Hannah's Boring Rocks. [laughs] You would not believe how heavy my bag was this morning with all these rocks. [laughs] Yeah.
Michael Stevens· Host0:18
Ooh, they're big, heavy ones.
Hannah Fry· Host0:19
I've got, um... I think this might be my favorite rock from, from just looking at it from afar. Do you wanna guess why it's my favorite rock?
Michael Stevens· Host0:25
Oh, wow, it looks like a, like a tuber, some kind of like potato relative. [laughs] But it's a rock.
Hannah Fry· Host0:33
It's a rock. It's definitely a rock for those of you who are watching.
Michael Stevens· Host0:35
Is it fossilized?
Hannah Fry· Host0:36
It is fossilized.
Michael Stevens· Host0:37
Yeah. Did it- Well spotted ... did it used to be a tree?
Hannah Fry· Host0:40
It did not used to be a tree. Well, I don't have a confirmation of this, by the way, because this is a rock.
Michael Stevens· Host0:44
Well, it's quite dense. So it looks like, it looks like a very knotted kind of knee, like a... Like, can you imagine an alien, like a gray classic alien, and you ripped its knee off an inch above and below. It's got little thin legs coming out of this weird knotted joint, but its real color is... Oh, well, it's interestingly, it's kind of a brownish gray.
Hannah Fry· Host1:08
A brownish gray. Okay.
Michael Stevens· Host1:09
I just did a Spoonerism in real life.
Hannah Fry· Host1:11
You tr- [laughs] That is amazing. You almost never see them in this flesh- You almost never see them ... in the wild.
Michael Stevens· Host1:16
[laughs] That was one. It's a brownish gray- [laughs] ... but there's flecks of like purplish pink on it.
Hannah Fry· Host1:24
Yeah. I'm not sure what that is actually.
Michael Stevens· Host1:26
Little splotches.
Hannah Fry· Host1:26
I'm not sure what that is.
Michael Stevens· Host1:27
And then there's places where it's been chipped, and you can