Spiritual Fossils

My background is in anatomy but I taught other science subjects as well and one of the topics that fascinated me was fossils because of their relationships to bones but fossils have a lot more diversity than just mineralized bones.

Fossils come in all sizes: from one-micrometer (1 µm) bacteria to dinosaurs and trees, many meters long and weighing many tons. A fossil normally preserves only a part of the deceased organism, usually that portion that was partially mineralized during life, such as the bones and teeth of vertebrates, or the chitinous or calcareous exoskeletons of invertebrates. Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces (coprolites). These types of fossils are called trace fossils or ichnofossils, as opposed to body fossils. Some fossils are biochemical and are called chemofossils or biosignatures

 All fossils have 3 things in common they are over 10,000 years old, they retain some characteristic of the organism it came from and it is dead. Petroleum is made from old dead things but since you can't know what the original organism was it is not a fossil. A 15,000 year old Sequoia isn't dead so it's not a fossil. A cave painting is not a fossil because what is left does not indicate the part of the organism that made it.

Fossils can be classified by what they tell us. For instance facies fossils which are living fossils and index fossils which come from extinct species and can tell us where in time we are.

The can also be classified by how they are made.

• Body Fossils. Whole body fossils are the entire remains of prehistoric organisms including soft tissue, such as insects embalmed in tree sap that hardens to create amber.
• Molds and Casts. Molds and casts are another other types of body fossis. A mold is an imprint left by the shell of a hard skeleton on surrounding rock, such as dinosaur bones buried beneath many layers of sediment.
• Petrified Fossils. When groundwater saturates a plant or animal's remains after it dies, sometimes the organism's materials dissolve, and minerals such as calcite, iron and silica replace them.
• Footprints and Trackways. Footprints, trackways, trails and burrows through mud sometimes harden and become fossils known as trace fossils. These give information about how animals behaved when they were alive, such as how they moved and how and where they fed.  

Spiritually we also leave behind remnants. Are we microfossils whose faith was barely visible? Are we best remembered for our waste (coprolites0? What spiritual tale do our footprints leave? Did we allow God to replace our fallen nature with the Holy Spirit? What portion of our spirit was left behind to indicate what type of Christians we were? I think of the 7 letters to the 7 churches in Revelation. What kind of letter would Paul send you? What type of spiritual fossils will you leave behind?