Preservation
Dinosaur fossils with Dakota's degree of preservation are extremely rare because many different factors must come together to allow it to occur. The carcass first must escape scavengers as well as degradation by the elements. The soft tissue must then be mineralized before it decomposes. Finally, as with all fossils, the mineralized body must escape destruction by geological forces over millions of years.
News reports have referred to Dakota as "mummified"; however, it is actually a fossil of a mummified dinosaur, where the animal's dried tissues have been transformed to rock through fossilization.
Read more about this topic: Dakota (fossil)
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)