The Fossils of Murter Island.

Datum objave: 15. December, 2016.

Eco patrol took advantage of the sunny Saturday for an outdoors activity to search for the footprints of the past of Murter Island, marine Fossils! To understand what are they and where they come from we have to go back several million years ago. The story starts with the creation of the Adriatic Sea in the Dinosaurs period, the Triassic, more than 200 million years ago. The process continuous in the Cretaceous where most of the depositions and fossils were created until nowadays.

But what is a fossil?  A fossil is the naturally preserved remains or traces of animals or plants that lived in the geologic past.

So how are fossils formed anyway? There are several processes that plants and animals or their parts can be preserved. No matter which way preservation occurs it takes a lot of luck, pure happenstance, depending environment conditions in the moment of death. The most common method of fossilization is called permineralization, or petrification. After an organism’s soft tissues decay in sediment, the hard parts, particularly the bones, are left behind.

Thanks to Lovro Skračiću the participants could have a direct contact with real fossils from this period Cretaceous. Once the theory was understood, we could pass to action!

We walk around and climb Gradina hill searching not only for fossils but also for all kind of materials that can call their attention and that they like to keep forever… turning them into a future fossil! Shells, flowers, leaves… On the top of the hill, we play some energizing games, make a circle and discuss in common what had we found. At the end, using clay and the rest of the materials collected every participant when home with its own future fossil print made by themselves ready to wait for the years to pass by.

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