When conducting an investigation, what’s the first thing a detective needs to do? Find clues. The trick is, what’s really a clue and what isn’t?
When a police detective studies the scene of a crime, there are many things to look at, but only some of them are really clues that will help solve the crime.
The same is true for fossil detectives. When paleontologists look for fossil clues, they have to be able to tell if what they are looking at really is a fossil or not