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Moment of Um

What happens when paleontologists find a fossil?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Make no bones about it – fossils are super cool! But what do you do if you find a fossil? We asked Jingmai O’Connor, the Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago, to help us find  the answer.


Got a question that’s buried in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help dig up the answer!

Transcript

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0:00.0

From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.

0:06.5

Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, moment of om comes to you from APM studios.

0:13.4

I'm fiddle, and I'm a dog.

0:16.2

Um, um.

0:18.8

Um. Um Hey, hi, hello there.

0:27.6

So nice to see you. You smell interesting.

0:31.6

Hey, do you want to go to the dog park?

0:39.5

I went to the dog park today, and there was a dog, and he was digging.

0:45.7

Yeah, dig, dig, dig, and he had his whole face in the mud.

0:51.0

There's so much cool stuff buried underground, rocks, tulip bulbs, sticks, poop from that big

0:58.3

scary neighbor cat, a toy that somebody else buried. Or maybe something called a fossil. My human, Anna,

1:10.5

says a fossil is like a bone, but it's not a bone. It's a thing that was a bone,

1:16.2

and then turn slowly into a rock. I like bones. Maybe I should dig. Will I find a fossil?

1:25.7

What happens if I do? Robert had the same question.

1:29.3

What do experts do when they find a fossil?

1:33.3

Let's talk to a human who knows the answer.

1:41.3

So if you see a fossil on the ground, what first thing you need to do is figure out where that fossil's coming from.

1:52.5

My name is Jamil Connor, and I am the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago.

1:59.7

I am a dinosaur paleobiologist. Most fossils come from

2:05.4

deserts, and the reason for this is because fossils can only form in sedimentary rocks. So these are

2:12.1

rocks that are created by tiny little bits of existing rocks. So for example, lots of accumulated sand, forming sandstone, or mud forming mudstone.

2:24.0

So as these layers of sedimentary rocks are forming, if an animal dies and falls into that

...

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