Taphonomy

Extract

Definitions.– Taphonomy is the study of what happens to an organism from the time of its death until it is discovered as a fossil. Whereas paleoecology deals with the interactions between an organism and its environment during life, taphonomy is concerned with post-mortem processes such as disarticulation, predation, transportation, and diagenetic alteration. Biostratinomy (formerly biostratonomy) is the part of taphonomy which covers the history of the organism from death to final burial of the remains. The chemical, physical, and biological processes which affect these remains after burial are dealt with in studies of diagenesis. The relationship of these disciplines is shown in Figure 1.