Biostratinomy
Biostratinomy is the study of the processes that take place after an organism dies but before its final burial. It is considered to be a subsection of the science of taphonomy, along with necrology (the study of the death of an organism) and diagenesis (the changes that take place after final burial). These processes are largely destructive, and include physical, chemical and biological effects:
- Physical effects non-exhaustively include transport, breakage and exhumation.
- Chemical effects include early changes in mineralogy and oxidation.
- Biological effects include decay, scavenging, bioturbation, encrustation and boring.
For the vast majority of organisms, biostratinomic destruction is total. However, if at least a few remnants of an organism make it to final burial, a fossil may eventually be formed unless destruction is completed by diagenesis. As the processes of biostratinomy are often dominated by sedimentological factors, analysis of the biostratinomy of a fossil can reveal important features about the physical environment it once lived in. The boundaries between the three disciplines within taphonomy are partly arbitrary. In particular, the role of microbes in sealing and preserving organisms, for example in a process called autolithification, is now recognised to be a very important and early event in the preservation of many exceptional fossils, often taking place before burial. Such mineralogical changes might equally be considered to be biostratinomic as diagenetic.
A school of investigation called aktuopaläontologie, subsisting largely in Germany, attempts to investigate biostratinomic effects by experimentation and observation on extant organisms. William Schäfer's book "Ecology and palaeoecology of marine environments" is a classic product of this sort of investigation. More recently, D.E.G. Briggs and colleagues have made detailed studies of decay with the prime aim of understanding the profound halt to these processes that is required by exceptional preservation in lagerstätten.
References
- ^ Fernández López, S.R. (2000). Temas de Tafonomía. Department of Paleontology, Complutense University of Madrid. 167 pages. (in Spanish)
Further reading
- Schäfer, W.; C.Y. Craig, Ed. (1972). Ecology and palaeoecology of marine environments. The University of Chicago Press, 568 pp. ISBN 978-0050021279, OCLC 533007
- v
- t
- e
Cell death |
|
---|---|
Body |
| ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Other aspects |
- Ghosts
- Near-death experience
- Near-death studies
- Necromancy
- Out-of-body experience
- Reincarnation research
- Séance
- Abortion law
- Administration
- Capital punishment
- Cause of death
- Civil death
- Coroner
- Death-qualified jury
- Death certificate
- Declared death in absentia
- Death row
- Dying declaration
- Inquest
- Legal death
- Murder
- Necropolitics
- Prohibition of dying
- Right to die
- Suspicious death
- Trust law
- Will
- Apparent death
- Chinese burial money
- Coins for the dead
- Dark tourism
- Darwin Awards
- Death and culture
- Death anniversary
- Death anxiety
- Death deity
- Personification of death
- Dying-and-rising god
- Psychopomp
- Death camp
- Death drive
- Death education
- Death from laughter
- Death hoax
- Death knell
- Death march
- Death messenger
- Death notification
- Death panel
- Death poem
- Death pose
- Death-positive movement
- Death squad
- Death threat
- Death trajectory
- Dignified death
- Extinction
- Festival of the Dead
- Fascination with death
- Hierarchy of death
- Homicide
- Immortality
- Last rites
- Longevity
- Martyr
- Museum of Death
- Necronym
- Necrophilia
- Necrophobia
- Philosophy of death
- Predation
- Sacrifice
- Suicide
- Thanatosensitivity
- Category
- Outline