What I'm holding in my hands is a fossilized shell.

In a study published Wednesday in the science journal Nature, Laurentian University geologist Elizabeth Turner detailed how she found fossilized three-dimensional structures that resemble modern sponge skeletons in thin sections of rocks taken from the remnants of a prehistoric ocean reef.

A new study based on fossilized footprints suggests a prehistoric relative of modern crocodiles walked on two hind legs.

“One of the fun things about some of the fossils is, they tell stories,” Bowen said, pointing to a fossilized stingray hanging on the shop wall.

The town of Kemmerer calls itself “Wyoming’s Aquarium in Stone.” Quarries just outside town yield schools of fossilized fish with just a few taps of a chisel.

Amber is fossilized resin.

A fossilized shell is what I'm holding in my hands.

Like arthropods today, trilobites molted as they grew, shedding their old exoskeleton. These molts could fossilize, so one animal could leave several different sized fossils behind.

Possibly the fossilized tracks belong to animals of the Jurassic period.

The fossilized footprints had originally been thought to belong to a pterosaur — a flying dinosaur — that had been walking on two legs.