Coragyps

Is anyone aware of any experiments on how fossilization occurs? I keep getting in discussions with creationists who insist that it could only have been in the Big Flood, and I know that's nonsense, but I would like to have some data to throw back at them - like someone burying roadkill possums in dirt, leaf litter, and anoxic pond-bottom sediment and coming back ten years later to see how they all fared.

I don't even know where to start - the false leads you would get typing "fossilization" into google would be overwhelming! I would guess that work like this was probably done a century or more ago - anyone have any references?

ps418

Here are a few books and a web page on the processes of fossilization:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521591716/qid=1026523043/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/103-5974395-9536668" target="_blank">Taphonomy: A Process Approach.</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674530861/qid=1026523043/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/103-5974395-9536668" target="_blank">Life History of a Fossil: An Introduction to Taphonomy and Paleoecology </a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226041689/qid=1026523139/sr=1-14/ref=sr_1_14/103-5974395-9536668" target="_blank">Fossils in the Making: Vertebrate Taphonomy and Paleoecology</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0231076746/qid=1026523239/sr=1-21/ref=sr_1_21/103-5974395-9536668" target="_blank">The Processes of Fossilization</a>

<a href="http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/fossilization.htm" target="_blank">NonCatastrophic and Modern Fossilization</a>

Patrick

DireStraits

Is anyone aware of any experiments on how fossilization occurs?

DireStraits: If you are looking for experiments, you are going to be disappointed, I think. Fossilization is a very long process indeed.

I keep getting in discussions with creationists who insist that it could only have been in the Big Flood, and I know that's nonsense, but I would like to have some data to throw back at them - like someone burying roadkill possums in dirt, leaf litter, and anoxic pond-bottom sediment and coming back ten years later to see how they all fared.

DireStraits. Forget it. Fossilization cannot occur in such a short period of time. The animal or plant may be well preserved under such circumstances, but fossilization would not even have begun.

Try asking your adversaries to tell you about a credentialled geologist or biologist who thinks that fossilization can occur in 6-10K years.

ps418

Here's another good link:

<a href="http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1998/spriggs.htm" target="_blank">Taphonomy: Death Is A Sure Bet, Fossilization Is A Long Shot </a>

Hallucigenia

Here is a link to the University of Bristol's "Experimental Taphonomy" website:
<a href="http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Taph/index.html" target="_blank">http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Taph/index.html</a>

And here is SSETI's (Shelf and Slope Experimental Taphonomy Initiative):
<a href="http://vertigo.hsrl.rutgers.edu/SSETI.html" target="_blank">http://vertigo.hsrl.rutgers.edu/SSETI.html</a>

A number of other potentially useful sites can be found by entering "experimental taphonomy" in Google.

tgamble

Nah, to easy.

Gary Parker, John Morris, Steve Austin, John Woodmorappe.

They have no evidence that it could of course, but they believe it anyway.

Coragyps

Thanks, Patrick and Hallucigenia! That's exactly what I was after - I guess "taphonomy" is the word I needed all along.

DS - Yeah, I didn't expect that the entire fossilization process could be mimiced in the lab - but various pieces of it are a bit less time-consuming.

tg - Don't forget Henry Morris - he may be a living fossil already.

Dr.GH

I'd also like to thank the contributers to the thread. I found in quite helpful.

ps418

Just to pick a nit:

There are many different processes of "fossilization," some of which can operate fairly rapidly under the appropriate conditions.

Then again, there are other types of preservation that are indeed slow, such as replacement of calcite shells on the seafloor with glauconite, for instance.

This is just a caution against over -generalization, since YECs often make the opposite over-generalization -- for instance, that stratum X cannot be millions of years old because it is weakly lithfied, etc.

Patrick