A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group.

* Transitional fossil, any fossilized remains of a lifeform that exhibits the characteristics of two distinct taxonomic groups

Opened in 1981, it is home to an amphitheater, nature trails, and a stocked fishing pond, as well as the Interpretive Center, a small museum which features ice age fossil and local geology exhibits.

A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group.

A Lagerstätte (, from Lager ' storage ' Stätte ' place '; plural Lagerstätten ) is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossil with exceptional preservation — sometimes including preserved soft tissues.

The South Canterbury Museum is the main museum for the region, containing exhibits relating to physical geography and the environment, fossil remains, Māori rock art, the early settlement of the district, local maritime history, scrimshaw, the E P Seally natural history collection, and information about Richard Pearse, a local inventor and his attempts at manned flight in the first years of the 20th century.

It currently ( 2009 ) occupies a resplendent mansion, and exhibits among others: an Egyptian mummy, the Buddhist stupa from Bharhut, the Buddha's ashes, the Ashoka pillar, whose four-lion symbol became the official emblem of the Republic of India, fossil skeletons of prehistoric animals, an art collection, rare antiques, and a collection of meteorites.

The Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre offers fossil tours of local rivers and historical exhibits.

Interactive exhibits let visitors create fossil rubbings to take home, and a computer program discusses fossils, geology and the current natural history of the monument.

Page had devoted great care into each element of the museum — attractive fossil presentation, so it would not simply be " bones, bones, bones "; testing the most comfortable underfoot surface — carpet, not marble — and limiting the museum to exhibits that could be easily covered in about an hour.

The center functions as a museum with exhibits that concentrate on the natural history related to findings in the nearby fossil beds as well as the human history of the Louisville area, covering pre-settlement, early settlement, and Louisville and southern Indiana history all the way up through the 20th century.

There are large gaps in the fossil record but the discovery of a proto-frog from the Early Permian in Texas in 2008 provided a missing link with many of the characteristics of modern frogs.

Skeptics claim that many of the allegedly hominin-like features seen in the Ardipithecus material are found elsewhere among living and fossil primates, and that claims about its hominin status and locomotor habits are not adequately supported by the available evidence.

Succinite has a hardness between 2 and 3, which is rather greater than that of many other fossil resins.

* In February 2006 a fossil, the Gawis cranium, was found which might possibly be a species intermediate between H. erectus and H. sapiens or one of many evolutionary dead ends.

Much focus has been put on the illegal fossil dealing in China, where many specimens have been stolen.

However, the fossil record retains evidence of many of these older species.

Among the many ways of classifying plants are by regional floras, which, depending on the purpose of study, can also include fossil flora, remnants of plant life from a previous era.

In the Soan River Gorge many fossil bearing rocks are exposed on the surface.

Huge fossil beds made of the bones of hundreds or thousands of individuals suggest that many of the larger brontothere species were social animals at least some of the time.

Pterodactylus is known from over 27 fossil specimens, and though most of those are juveniles, many preserve complete skeletons.

Classification of pterosaurs has historically been difficult, because there were many gaps in the fossil record.

More fossil specimens of Pteranodon have been found than any other pterosaur, with about 1, 200 specimens known to science, many of them well preserved with nearly complete skulls and articulated skeletons.

Because fossils identifiable as P. sternbergi are found exclusively in the lower layers of the Niobrara Formation, and P. longiceps fossils exclusively in the upper layers, a fossil lacking the skull can be identified based on its position in the geologic column ( though for many early fossil finds, precise data about its location was not recorded, rendering many fossils unidentifiable ).

Scorpions have been found in many fossil records, including marine Silurian deposits, coal deposits from the Carboniferous Period and in amber.

There is fossil evidence that many Malagasy Hippos were hunted by humans, a likely factor in their eventual extinction.

In addition, he is a primary describer of many hominid fossil remains.

Almost as time-consuming has been the preparation and publication of the 2nd edition of Paleoanthropology ( 1999, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-071676-5 ), Wolpoff's detailed 878 page presentation of the fossil record for human evolution and the many levels of explanation for the pattern it reflects.

" As time passed, Anning's confidence in her knowledge grew, and in 1839 she wrote to the Magazine of Natural History to question the claim made in an article, that a recently discovered fossil of the prehistoric shark Hybodus represented a new genus, as an error since she had discovered the existence of fossil sharks with both straight and hooked teeth many years ago.

Anning noted how closely the fossilised chambers resembled the ink sacs of modern squid and cuttle fish, which she had dissected to understand the anatomy of fossil cephalopods, and this led William Buckland to publish the conclusion that Jurassic belemnites had used ink for defence just as many modern cephalopods do.

In 2008, a fossil of Gerobatrachus hottoni, a stem anuran with many salamander-like characteristics, was discovered in Texas.

Currently, the use of fossil fuels has artificially increased the carrying capacity of the world by the use of stored sunlight, albeit at many other expenses.

In December 1829 she found a fossil fish, Squaloraja, which attracted attention because it had characteristics intermediate between sharks and rays.

Because of its ancient ancestry and " primitive " characteristics, it has been described as a " living fossil ".

However, studies of a well-preserved fossil putative aquatic angiosperm, Archaefructus, have raised questions about what characteristics are more ancestral.

Early characteristics of seed plants were evident in fossil progymnosperms of the late Devonian period around 380 million years ago.

Though the fossil remains of Therizinosaurus are incomplete, inferences can be made about their physical characteristics based on related therizinosaurids.

One of the first named genera was Ceratops itself, which lent its name to the group, although it is considered a nomen dubium today as its fossil remains have no distinguishing characteristics that are not also found in other ceratopsians.

Colonized fossil roots have been observed in Aglaophyton major and Rhynia, which are ancient plants possessing characteristics of vascular plants and bryophytes with primitive protostelic rhizomes.

* Early primate fossil with anthropoid ( i. e. non-lemuroid ) characteristics ( discovery made public May 2009 ), ( see Darwinius masillae )

The mountain beaver is considered a living fossil, due to the presence of a host of primitive characteristics, particularly the protrogomorphous zygomasseteric system.