Always obtain permission from the appropriate authorities before you start collecting fossils. Microfossils are fossils that are too small to be seen without a microscope. Pollen, bacteria, and single-cell organisms can be found as fossils but are often overlooked. Macrofossils are easier to find. Fossilized plants and animals, and their parts and traces are all macrofossils.
Microfossils are tiny, but recognizable, bits of plant or animal matter.
They occur in thousands of different forms, but the most common are pollen grains, spores, reproductive structures of fungi, and numerous walls of microscopic algae. These are all invisible to the unaided eye, but easily recognized in a microscope. Microfossils are informative and abundant, occurring in many kinds of sediment. This is easy to understand if you think about how many tiny grains of pollen blow around every year in British Columbia. Plant fossils, especially pollen and spores, provide paleobotanists with one of the most powerful tools of understanding the history of ecosystems and the processes that shape them.