How It Happens
Plenty of phosphate is required, either from seawater or from the tissues of the decaying organism. In some cases microbes control the phosphatization, and the remains of the microbes that were "feeding" on the preserved tissue form the fossil. In other, the tissue itself is the source of phosphate and its phosphatized remains form the fossil. In the intermediate case the phosphatized tissue retains the impressions of the phosphatizing microbes.
Read more about this topic: Phosphatic Fossilization
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