The Truth About Fossil Fuels

Were you taught in school that fossil fuels come from dinosaurs bones? Or maybe you just have that impression from the very name “fossil fuels”.

The origin of the word actually does not refer to what we generally think of as fossils. According to Oxford Dictionary, the word “fossil” means, “[o]btained by digging; found buried in the earth” and the use in the word “fossil fuels” predates our more common usage in reference to fossilized bones.

Fossil fuels are actually from things like algae, bacteria, and phytoplankton, not from dinosaur bones.

I remember watching a neat video on the subject early last year and seeing an interesting comment saying that because of how they say it in his native language, he had never even considered that some people would draw a connection to dinosaur fossils. He was from somewhere in Europe if I remember correctly.

There is also an internet factoid (definition 1) floating around that claims John D. Rockefeller came up with the term “fossil fuel” to trick people into thinking it was a scarce resource to drive up the price. From what I could find, this seems to be entirely made up.

• Category: Articles, Environment