Preserving the Softest TissuesResearchers from the University of Missouri and Virginia Tech have rel

Preserving the Softest TissuesResearchers from the University of Missouri and Virginia Tech have released a study detailing how soft tissues (think muscle, skin, etc) might be fossilized. Finding soft tissue fossils is relatively rare, mostly because they don’t preserve well; they tend to decay relatively quickly so there’s nothing left to fossilize. The picture below is of a remarkably well preserved jellyfish, Essexella asherae, from the Mazon Creek area in Illinois. According to the new research the process of decay that normally prohibits fossilization might have preserved a few soft tissue samples.The study focuses on Conotubus, an animal that lived in the Ediacaran Period some 540 million years ago and was about as hard as a human fingernail. When the animal died, bacteria started to eat the soft tissue just inside the exoskeleton and replaced it with pyrite, or fools gold. What was left, after a fairly quick 12 to 800 year process, was a tube of pyrite, a fossilized version of the soft tissue.This process of “active” fossilization is a relatively new idea. Present theories of how soft tissues are fossilized relie mostly on passive fossilization that occurs when the decay of soft tissues is halted in some way, such as burrying the animal in sediment, thus sealing it off. The discovery of fossilized embryos earlier this year is one example of this type of fossilization (1). This new theory will help scientists interpret fossilized data and might eventually give a clearer picture of the evolutionary tree of life, particularly during the Cambrian explosion, when life diverged in many directions simultaneously. (1) For more information of this discovery, please visit: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-rare-fossilized-embryos-million-years.html#inlRlvFurthur Reading: http://phys.org/news/2014-12-million-year-old-fossils-clues-fossil-formation.htmlPicture Credit: James St. John https://www.flickr.com/people/47445767@N05-Colter  -- source link

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