Taphonomy

Overview

Very few organisms that have ever existed throughout the entire length of geological time become preserved and represented in the fossil record. This is due to several reasons but mainly the result of the fact that a large percentage of all biological entities end up as food for other organisms. They also have a low probability of becoming fossilized because most organisms undergo aerobic decay, saprophytic and saprozoic decomposition, and recycling of their chemical components through exposure to the elements.

The term taphonomy comes from the Greek taphos meaning death or burial, and nomos meaning law, i.e. the law of burial. It was introduced to palaeontology in 1940 by the Russian scientist Ivan Efremov to describe the study of the creation of fossil assemblages through the transition of parts, remains, or products of organisms from the biosphere or living world to the lithosphere or sedimentary record. Taphonomy is the study of the post-mortem, pre-burial and post-burial histories of faunal remains and can best be described as the collective sum of all biotic and abiotic temporal and spatial processes an organism (or part of it) undergoes from the time of death until its discovery as a fossil. The palaeontological subdiscipline of taphonomy therefore relates to the study of a decaying organism over time and is concerned with the processes responsible for the pattern of any organism becoming incorporated into the fossil record and how these processes (including physical and chemical) influence information in the fossil record.