New fossil find, looks great as so intact

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muppetts
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New fossil find, looks great as so intact

Post by muppetts » Sat, 13. May 17, 09:21

Very cool fossil find, whole structure!


https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/b6bd9d41-b ... g-the.html

Before being assembled into something recognizable at a museum, most dinosaur fossils look to the casual observer like nothing more than common rocks. No one, however, would confuse the over 110 million-year-old nodosaur fossil for a stone. The fossil, being unveiled today in Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, is so well preserved it looks like a statue. Even more surprising might be its accidental discovery, as unveiled in the June issue of National Geographic magazine.
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Post by philip_hughes » Sat, 13. May 17, 12:25

Pretty awesome!
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Post by greypanther » Sat, 13. May 17, 15:28

Amazing really just how well preserved it is. :)

Puts the few fossils I have found into perspective.
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Post by philip_hughes » Sat, 13. May 17, 23:14

They broke it trying to remove it! Oh well. Still looks ok.
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Post by Memnoch » Sun, 14. May 17, 01:31

Looks like something straight out of Skyrim.

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Post by muppetts » Mon, 15. May 17, 10:03

I wonder how the flesh got petrified so fast, one assumes ash?
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Post by philip_hughes » Mon, 15. May 17, 13:07

The creature died probably in a flood, got swept out to sea, bloated up and exploded. The corpse them sank feet up to the bottom where the mud held everything in place. The actual preservation of keratin and other organics is beyond my experience as a soil scientist. It really shouldn't happen.
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Post by CBJ » Mon, 15. May 17, 13:28

I saw some controversial claims of soft tissue preservation in fossils a while back. A quick search brought up this article but I've no idea about its scientific quality.

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Post by pjknibbs » Mon, 15. May 17, 16:53

Don't we have actual examples of flesh preserved for thousands of years in acidic bogs? Would it not be possible for a creature to die in such a place, then, maybe after a heavy rainstorm, for the corpse to be washed into a place where it could fossilise? I'm no biologist, I have no idea if that sequence of events is possible...

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Post by philip_hughes » Mon, 15. May 17, 22:29

CBJ wrote:I saw some controversial claims of soft tissue preservation in fossils a while back. A quick search brought up this article but I've no idea about its scientific quality.
I don't trust it. Bacteria have learned to degrade and metabolize benzene. We have found bacteria that can exist in arsenic. The typical soil preservation element is aluminium, that can keep some organic compounds going for thousands of years but it's hardly recognizable. Extremes in cold can also keep things going for tens of thousands of years. Typically however, we measure the stability of organic carbon in years. Disturb a soil, the carbon goes away pretty much instantaneously.
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Post by philip_hughes » Tue, 16. May 17, 05:34

pjknibbs wrote:Don't we have actual examples of flesh preserved for thousands of years in acidic bogs? Would it not be possible for a creature to die in such a place, then, maybe after a heavy rainstorm, for the corpse to be washed into a place where it could fossilise? I'm no biologist, I have no idea if that sequence of events is possible...
Acidic bogs are preserved with aluminium activity. Same thing. Thousands- maybe. Millions- highly unlikely.

Having said that, creating the conditions in which fossils are made are pretty unlikely too, we have them.
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Post by muppetts » Tue, 16. May 17, 08:41

This fossil they report has skin and gut contents intact, so no signs of gas/bloating, seems it was preserved very fast, before putrification set in.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/canada-unvei ... 27635.html
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