An enigmatic fossil, once considered one of the earliest mollusks, has recently been reclassified by scientists from Durham ...

The feathers, it turned out, had been preserved by a mineral known as zeolite – part of a volcano’s sediment deposits, but something that, until now, was new to the fossilization game.

Fossilization favors larger, protein-rich animals because they create oxygen-poor conditions that slow decay, helping explain gaps in the fossil record and the dominance of arthropods in ancient ...

Although fossilization affects only a small fraction of the organisms that have ever lived, there are well-documented conditions that foster the process. Thanks to Efremov's founding of the ...

Why do some creatures leave behind fossils while others decompose entirely? What conditions support fossilization? These questions are answered by taphonomy, the study of the processes involved in ...

This dichotomy between how many T. rexes lived and how few fossils we have of them shows us just how rare fossilization is and how much more we have to learn about these majestic creatures.

A revolutionary study from the University of Liverpool has upended fundamental assumptions about the fossilization process, potentially transforming how scientists approach the study of ancient life.

Almost the entire animal—the skin, the armor that coats its skin, the spikes along its side, most of its body and feet, even its face—survived fossilization. It is, according to Dr. Donald ...

The most common method of fossilization is called permineralization, or petrification. After an organism's soft tissues decay in sediment, the hard parts — particularly the bones — are left ...

It was thought that when an animal dies under conditions suitable for fossilization, inert minerals from the surrounding environment eventually replace all the organic molecules—such as those ...

In an effort to better understand how the fossilization process affects various types of biological materials, scientists at Britain's University of Bristol developed a lab-based process in which ...