Burgess Shale Type Preservation - Elemental Distribution

Elemental Distribution

Elemental distribution is unevenly spread through the organic remains, allowing the original nature of the remnant film to be predicted. For example:

  • Silicon is more abundant in cuticular material
  • Aluminium and potassium are higher in the eyes
  • Calcium and phosphorus are generally associated with mid-gut glands, and aluminium is higher in the alimentary canal.
  • Areas in which Silicon is depleted, and Al and K concentrations elevated, have been interpreted as originally-fluid-filled cavities.

Because the fossiliferous layer is so thin, it is effectively transparent to electrons at high (>15V) accelerating voltages.

Read more about this topic:  Burgess Shale Type Preservation

Famous quotes containing the words elemental and/or distribution:

    What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)