Taphonomy
Tafonomía
- Date
- 1940 · confidence high
- Place
- Moscow, Russia
- Credited to
- Ivan Yefremov
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Soviet paleontologist Ivan Yefremov coined the term "taphonomy" and defined it as the study of how organic remains pass from the biosphere into the lithosphere: which decay, transport and burial processes determine what ends up fossilized.
Yefremov published "Taphonomy: a new branch of paleontology" in 1940, drawing on his fieldwork with vertebrate fossils in Central Asia.
What it led to
- Understanding of biases in the fossil record
- Application to archaeology and forensic science
- Reconstruction of paleoenvironments from fossil assemblages