Evolution And History

Recovering Cultural and Biological Remains 101

scavengers and bacteria that cause decomposition, they

rarely survive long enough to become fossilized. For an

organism to become a fossil, it must be covered by some

protective substance soon after death.

An organism or part of an organism may be preserved

in a number of ways. The whole animal may be frozen

in ice, like the famous mammoths found in Siberia, safe

from the forces of predators, weathering, and bacteria.

Or it may be enclosed in a natural resin exuding from

evergreen trees, later becoming hardened and fossilized

as amber. Specimens of spiders and insects dating back

millions of years have been preserved in the Baltic Sea area

in northeastern Europe, which is rich in resin-producing

evergreens such as pine, spruce, or fir trees.

Cultural and physical remains represent distinct kinds
of data, but the fullest interpretation of the human past re-
quires the integration of ancient human biology and cul-
ture. Often paleoanthropologists and archaeologists work
together to systematically excavate and analyze fragmen-
tary remains, placing scraps of bone, shattered pottery,
and scattered campsites into broad interpretive contexts.

The Nature of Fossils

Broadly defined, a fossil is any mineralized trace or im-
pression of an organism that has been preserved in the
earth’s crust from past geologic time. Fossilization typi-
cally involves the hard parts of an organism. Bones, teeth,
shells, horns, and the woody tissues of plants are the most
successfully fossilized materials. Although the soft parts of
an organism are rarely fossilized, casts or impressions of
footprints, brains, and even whole bodies are sometimes
found. Because dead animals quickly attract meat-eating

In rare circumstances, human bodies are so well preserved that they could be mistaken for recent corpses.
Such is the case of “Ötzi,” the 5,200-year-old “Ice Man,” exposed by the melting of an alpine glacier in the
Tyrolean Alps in 1991. Both the Italian and the Austrian governments felt they had legitimate claims on this
rare find, and they mounted legal, geographic, and taphonomic arguments for housing the body. These argu-
ments continued as the specimen, just released from the ice, began to thaw.

© AP Images

fossil Any mineralized trace or impression of an organism

that has been preserved in the earth’s crust from past geologic

time.

© AP Image

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