eli5: How do archeologists/geologists decide which rocks to break, in order to find fossils?
In: Earth Science
It’s often just the luck of someone finding something at the surface. Conditions for forming fossils are rare, but if someone finds that piece of bone somewhere, it’s worth digging, because where there’s one, conditions were right and there’s likely more.
But of course we know that certain rocks will yield nothing. You only find fossils in sediments. So you can also start out blindly and dig in sediments of the appropriate age that interests you. But generally you have a lead from previous finds mostly made by non-paleontologists.
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