GEOL 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Bioturbation, Taphonomy, Uniformitarianism
Document Summary
The study in its entirety of the transition of the biosphere into the lithosphere. Everything that happens from when an organism dies until when we find it. How and why does that incompleteness change across groups and environments. A large amount of taphonomic research is based uniformitarian principles. All of these processes can alter or even destroy remains. Some processes are more destructive to certain kinds of organisms than others. These differences in preservation potential are called biases. They can affect our interpretations of paleoecology, particularly biodiversity. Intrinsic features- traits of the organism itself. Extrinsic features- traits of an organism environment. Organisms with hard parts are more likely to be preserved than ones without. The more robust the hard parts, the more likely they will be preserved. Also the composition of an organism"s hard parts can affect their preservation potential. Certain biotic minerals dissolve more readily than others.
