Fossils Preserve Both Skin and Scales from an Ancient Sea Monster
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
“Skin, scales, and cells in a Jurassic plesiosaur” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
but I encourage you to read the summary at the top of the non-paywalled report above instead
I suppose there must be bone-eating organisms on the floor, given the number of dead bony animals that must lie there. But there is also a lot of pressure and I don't know how seawater affects fossilization.
I'm really wondering: if we could get easier access to the deep ocean floor, would it impact archaeology in a big way?
> when they lived from 215 million to 66 million years ago.
I hadn't thought about it, but what happened to organisms living underwater during the K-T extinction event (which was 66 million years ago).
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)...