Experimental samples compared to fossils down to the microscopic structure of melanosomes.
Fossil lizard images courtesy of Nicholas Edwards and Wang Yuan
A newly published experimental protocol, involving University of Bristol scientists, could change the way fossilisation is studied. In addition to directly studying fossils themselves, experimental treatments of fresh organismal remains can be utilised to study fossilisation. One commonly employed experimental approach is known as 'artificial maturation', where high heat and pressure accelerate the chemical degradation reactions that normally occur over millions of years when a fossil is buried deep underground and exposed to geothermal heat and pressure from overlying sediment. Maturation has been a staple of organic geochemists who wish to study the formation of fossil fuels and is in some ways similar to the more intense experimental conditions that produce synthetic diamonds. More recently, maturation has been used to study the formation of exceptional fossils that preserve soft tissues as dark, organic films in addition to mineralised tissues like bone, including fossil dinosaurs from China with organically preserved feathers. However, much maturation equipment is often limited by the use of small, sealed chambers which trap not only the highly stable organic molecules of interest to palaeontologists and organic geochemists, but also the breakdown products of less stable molecules that are less likely to be retained in fossils. Therefore, direct comparisons between the experiments and the fossils become complicated.
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