the.com/fossilization
Dying is easy; getting remembered for 300 million years takes excellent timing and zero oxygen.
means The process by which the remains or traces of a once-living thing turn to rock over vast stretches of time, usually by minerals replacing organic material after rapid burial in sediment.
from From 'fossil,' which traces to Latin 'fossilis' meaning 'dug up,' itself from 'fodere,' to dig. Early modern naturalists first used 'fossil' loosely for anything pulled from the ground — oddly shaped stones, crystals, buried bones alike — before the word narrowed, by the 1700s, to mean specifically the petrified remains of ancient organisms. The '-ization' is the standard suffix for naming a gradual process, so the word itself preserves its own history: a term originally about excavation slowly fossilized into one about preservation.
- odds
- less than one in a billion organisms fossilize
- requirement
- rapid burial before decay or scavengers win
- misconception
- bone rarely survives; it's usually replaced by minerals
- soft tissue
- skin and feathers need near-instant entombment to preserve