Fossil Fuels: Ancient Swamps

If fossil fuels are made from fossils, are oil, gas and coal made from dead dinosaurs? Well, no, but they are made from fossils. We do not heat our homes or run our cars on dead hadrosaurs. Instead, we burn very old plants and algae.  It sounds much less exciting, but the process by which algae and other plant life soak up the Sun's energy, store it for millions of years, then give it all up for us to burn as fuel is a pretty fantastic tale.