September 10, 2025Open Access

Fossilisation ecology – a more complete concept of taphonomy

JRJes RustAmerican Museum of Natural History VMVictoria E. McCoyFord Foundation

Key Points

The study proposes fossilisation ecology as a new lens to understand taphonomy, emphasizing ecological factors.
Fossilisation ecology incorporates the interactions between organisms and their environments, influencing fossil outcomes.
This framework broadens the conventional view of taphonomy, proposing new avenues for paleontological research.
Understanding fossilisation from an ecological perspective highlights complexities often overlooked in traditional taphonomy.

Abstract

Taphonomy, a subdiscipline of paleontology, is generally concerned with everything that happens from the death of an organism through to the discovery of its fossil. Here we propose the concept of fossilisation ecology, which extends taphonomy by formalising the idea that the ecology of an organism may affect its fossilisation.

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Cite This Study

Rust et al. (Fri,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68c1d03554b1d3bfb60f6e7a https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2025.07.016

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