When you think about looking for oil, gas, or minerals, you might imagine big machines and high-tech sensors. But some of the best tools for the job are actually millions of years old. Experts use something called biostratigraphy to find these resources. Basically, they look for specific fossils that act like timestamps in the earth. If they find a certain type of ancient spore in one place, they know exactly how old that layer of rock is. This helps them track where valuable materials might be hiding across huge distances.
It is all about the layers. Think of the Earth like a giant layer cake. If you know that the
