Interactive Tool
Answer a few questions to identify your fossil type and learn more about it.
Actual body parts (bones, shells, teeth)
You can see recognizable anatomical structures — a shell spiral, bone texture, or tooth shape.
Tracks, burrows, or other activity traces
No actual body material, but evidence of an organism's behavior — footprints, trails, burrows.
A hollow impression in rock
An empty space shaped like an organism where the original material has dissolved away.
A flat imprint on a rock surface
A 2D imprint, often of leaves, feathers, or soft-bodied organisms on fine-grained rock.
Preserved in amber (yellow/orange resin)
A small organism trapped inside translucent fossilized tree resin.
Looks like stone but has organic structure
Heavy, rock-like, but shows original structures like growth rings or cell walls under magnification.