EARTH SCIENCE ARCHIVE / FOSSIL FORMATION From Ancient Bones to Stone: The Science of Fossilization Discover how burial, groundwater, mineral chemistry, and geological processes can preserve the remains of ancient animals for millions of years. BURIAL   →   MINERALIZATION   →   ROCK FORMATION   →   DISCOVERY When an animal dies, its bones … Read more

When Charles Darwin reflected upon the imperfections of the geological record in On the Origin of Species, he famously described it as a history of the world imperfectly kept, written in a changing dialect, and of which we possess but a few pages of a single volume. What Darwin was describing is the core discipline … Read more

The standard fossil record is inherently biased toward organisms with durable biomineralized hard parts — bones, teeth, calcified shells, and lignified wood. For the overwhelming majority of biological history, soft-bodied organisms (which constitute over 90 percent of animal phyla) decay into nonexistence within hours or days of death, leaving no trace in conventional sandstone or … Read more

While heavy skeletal bones and petrified mineral logs command grand museum galleries, some of the most delicate evolutionary breakthroughs in paleontology are preserved not as three-dimensional stone replicas, but as gossamer-thin, pitch-black silhouettes etched onto sedimentary shale. This is the realm of carbonization — also referred to by taphonomists as distillation or carbon compression. Through … Read more

When visitors stroll through the vibrant badlands of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, they encounter massive, fallen tree trunks that appear to have been felled only yesterday, complete with bark bark grooves, growth rings, and wood grain. Yet upon touching these logs, one discovers cold, heavy, crystalline stone: quartz, chalcedony, jasper, and agate. This … Read more