fossil fuel

(noun)

any fuel derived from hydrocarbon deposits such as coal, petroleum, natural gas, and, to some extent, peat; these fuels are irreplaceable; their burning generates the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide

Examples of fossil fuel in the following topics:

  • The Carbon Cycle

    • Since the 1800s (the beginning of the Industrial Revolution), the number of countries using massive amounts of fossil fuels increased, which raised the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
    • Carbon is stored for long periods in what are known as carbon reservoirs, which include the atmosphere, bodies of liquid water (mostly oceans), ocean sediment, soil, land sediments (including fossil fuels), and the earth's interior.
    • Deeper underground, on land and at sea, are fossil fuels: the anaerobically-decomposed remains of plants that take millions of years to form.
    • Fossil fuels are considered a non-renewable resource because their use far exceeds their rate of formation.
    • Although much of the debate about the future effects of increasing atmospheric carbon on climate change focuses on fossils fuels, scientists take natural processes, such as volcanoes and respiration, into account as they model and predict the future impact of this increase.

  • Modeling Ecosystem Dynamics

    • Human combustion of fossil fuels accelerates this conversion by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which may be a large contributor to the rise of the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the industrial age.
    • The carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels is produced faster than photosynthetic organisms can use it, while the number of photosynthetic trees have decreased because of worldwide deforestation.

  • Biogeochemical Cycles

    • Carbon, found in all organic macromolecules, is an important constituent of fossil fuels.
    • Sulfur, critical to the 3–D folding of proteins (as in disulfide binding), is released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal.

  • Evidence of Global Climate Change

    • These new technologies were powered using fossil fuels, especially coal.
    • When a fossil fuel is burned, carbon dioxide is released.

  • Causes of Global Climate Change

    • The primary mechanism that releases carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline, coal, and natural gas .
    • The burning of fossil fuels in industry and by vehicles releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

  • Gaps in the Fossil Record

    • Because not all animals have bodies which fossilize easily, the fossil record is considered incomplete.
    • Each fossil discovery represents a snapshot of the process of evolution.
    • Because of the specialized and rare conditions required for a biological structure to fossilize, many important species or groups may never leave fossils at all.
    • The fossil record is very uneven and is mostly comprised of fossils of organisms with hard body parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little to no fossil record.
    • Some scientists have suggested that the geochemistry of the time period caused bad conditions for fossil formation, so few organisms were fossilized.

  • The Fossil Record as Evidence for Evolution

    • Fossils range in age from 10,000 to 3.48 billion years old.
    • These types of fossils are called trace fossils, or ichnofossils, as opposed to body fossils.
    • The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations and sedimentary layers (strata) is known as the fossil record.
    • Fossils provide solid evidence that organisms from the past are not the same as those found today; fossils show a progression of evolution.
    • Footprints are examples of trace fossils, which contribute to the fossil record.

  • Fossil Formation

    • The process of a once living organism becoming a fossil is called fossilization.
    • Fossilization is a very rare process, and of all the organisms that have lived on Earth, only a tiny percentage of them ever become fossils.
    • Fossilization can occur in many ways.
    • Most fossils are preserved in one of five processes:
    • Fossilized dinosaur bones, petrified wood, and many marine fossils were formed by permineralization.

  • The Fossil Record and the Evolution of the Modern Horse

    • The detailed fossil record of horses has provided insight into their evolutionary progress.
    • Scientists date and categorize fossils  to determine when the organisms lived relative to each other.
    • Highly detailed fossil records have been recovered for sequences in the evolution of modern horses.
    • The fossil record of horses in North America is especially rich and contains transition fossils: fossils that show intermediate stages between earlier and later forms.
    • The first equid fossil was found in the gypsum quarries in Montmartre, Paris in the 1820s.

  • Carbon Dating and Estimating Fossil Age

    • A substantial hurdle is the difficulty of working out fossil ages.
    • There are several different methods for estimating the ages of fossils, including:
    • Paleontologists rely on stratigraphy to date fossils.
    • If a fossil is found between two layers of rock whose ages are known, the fossil's age is thought to be between those two known ages.
    • Misleading results can occur if the index fossils are incorrectly dated.