the.com/bone bed
Geology's mass grave: a rock layer so packed with fossils it reads like a crime scene.
means A sedimentary layer unusually dense with fossilized bones or teeth, formed where remains accumulated faster than they could scatter or decay.
from Straightforward compound from geology — 'bone' plus 'bed,' the standard term for a rock layer or stratum (from Old English 'bedd,' something laid down). Bone beds form where currents, droughts, mass die-offs, or predator traps concentrated skeletal material in one place before burial, so the phrase is less metaphor than plain description: a bed made of bones, named by the geologists who first dug into one.
- formation
- mass death or mass accumulation over time
- density
- can hold thousands of bones per square meter
- famous example
- dinosaur national monument's cliff of bones
- clue to
- ancient floods, droughts, or predator traps