Comment by throwup238
3 days ago
> how many fossils there might be at total on earth
The number is both incalculable and vague - is a shark tooth enough to count as a fossil? How about diatoms and other microfossils?
Diatomaceous earth alone contains around 10^6-10^7 frustules (the shell of a diatom) per gram. If you count them as fossils then the lower bound is 10^18 fossils per year just in diatomaceous earth production (the fossils are ancient but we produce nearly a million tons a year in diatomaceous earth).
> is a shark tooth enough to count as a fossil
No, but a fossil of a shark tooth counts as a fossil..
What does that mean though? Shark teeth are already mineralized (fluorapatite) so you can find two million year old Megalodon teeth at the Earnst Quarry in Bakersfield that exist just as they did in the mouth of the shark without any extra “fossilization”
If you have a fossil, and break it in half, then do you now have two fossils?