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Record W2494514411 · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511793844.004

Fossils and fossilization

2015· book-chapter· en· W2494514411 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Susan Cachel

Bibliographic record

VenueCambridge University Press eBooks · 2015
Typebook-chapter
Languageen
FieldEarth and Planetary Sciences
TopicPaleontology and Evolutionary Biology
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsFossilizationTaphonomyMineralization (soil science)BiologyBiomineralizationPaleontologyEcology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The origin of fossils After an animal dies, its behavior immediately stops. Of course! Thus, behavior is the first component of the phenotype to be lost. After this, DNA and soft tissues are also rapidly lost. Large and small animals may eat or scavenge the carcass, dismembering the body, stripping away flesh, and breaking open bones that are rich in marrow. Bacteria and fungi alter soft tissues as decay takes place. Nevertheless, soft-bodied organisms may be preserved as flattened carbon films, preserved as calcium phosphate, or altered by early mineralization. For example, in the 425 mya Eramosa Formation of Canada, animal tissues containing melanin were altered by sulfur early after death; this caused resistance to bacterial decay (von Bitter et al ., 2007). Exceptionally well-preserved material from this formation disproved an idea that shallow marine fossils after the Cambrian would be unlikely to fossilize in great detail. It had previously been thought that an increase in burrowing organisms after the Cambrian would irretrievably alter sediments. Specimens from the Eramosa Formation show that this is not necessarily the case. However, it must be understood that the likelihood of any single ancient organism being preserved is miniscule. It is only the multitude of organisms living over vast reaches of geological time that allows these faint probabilities to emerge as recognizable fossils. A special sub-discipline of paleontology has been created to study all of the processes that affect an organism immediately after death until its discovery as a fossil. This is taphonomy. Techniques used by paleontologists to study taphonomy and taphonomic processes affecting fossils are also used by archaeologists when analyzing archaeological materials and sites. They are also used by forensic anthropologists when analyzing material from a crime scene, especially when considering events around the time of death and after death (Klepinger, 2006).

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.032
Threshold uncertainty score0.108

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0010.005
Scholarly communication0.0020.004
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0320.006

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.034
GPT teacher head0.194
Teacher spread0.160 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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