Fossils can help to tell us about the conditions that existed in an area at a given time because fossils contain the remnants of certain plants and animal life that can be informative to reconstruct what the conditions of the place where these species lived when they were alive. This is informative as well because certain aspects of fossils can also be dated to give a time frame of when the fossils existed and therefore when certain environmental conditions existed where the fossils were found. Carbon dating is the common method that is used to date natural matter, however, this is believed to have limits in how far back the dating can go. Therefore, other methods are used to estimate dates of fossils as well in conjunction with efforts to use carbon dating.
