biostratinomy

Biostratinomy is the branch of taphonomy that examines the processes affecting organic remains from the moment of death up to their burial in sediment. It includes disarticulation and disaggregation of the organism, decay of soft tissues, destruction by scavengers or physical agents, and surface transport by water, wind, gravity, or other organisms. The duration of exposure on the surface, the energy of the depositional environment, and the anatomy of the organism (hard parts versus soft parts) all influence what survives to burial and in what condition.

Biostratinomy also considers ecological and behavioral interactions, such as trampling, burrowing, or reworking, which can mix remains from different habitats. These processes produce a death assemblage that may differ markedly from the organism’s life assemblage, affecting the degree of articulation, orientation, size sorting, and fragmentation observed in the fossil record. The biostratinomic phase thus helps explain preservation biases and the composition of early fossil assemblages.

Relation to diagenesis: biostratinomy ends with burial, after which diagenetic processes such as mineral replacement, cementation, and chemical alteration act on the remains during lithification and long-term preservation. Distinguishing biostratinomic signatures from diagenetic ones is essential for accurate paleoenvironmental reconstructions and taphonomic interpretation.

Applications: taphonomic analysis to infer depositional conditions, transport and scavenging dynamics, and biases in the fossil record; helps paleoecologists interpret how death assemblages relate to living communities.