Question: How did they identify fossils years ago before computers and advanced technology?

Jason King answered on 13 Mar 2013:

Fossils are actually really easy to find! In some areas, where millions of years ago the conditions were right for animals to get nicely preserved (like mud flats for example) you can just walk along a beach and pick them up. If you go down to Swanage, or Portland for example in the south of England, you can quite easily find quite large (over 50cm) fossils of things like ammonites, which look like huge snail shells. These days though, the technology helps us do clever things like look inside the fossils without having to cut them open, or even cut them out of the ground, as well as find them in the first place. This gives us much more information so we can imagine what they must have been like when they were alive.