Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The study of the conditions and processes by which organisms become fossilized.
- n. The conditions and processes of fossilization.
Wiktionary
- n. The study of the fate of the remains of organisms after they die, especially the study of fossilization.
Etymologies
- Greek taphē, grave + -nomy. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Rotting fish and taphonomy: what fossilizes? was the previous entry in this blog.”
“Rotting fish and taphonomy: what fossilizes? is the next entry in this blog.”
Evidence that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is wrong? - The Panda's Thumb
“Martin Brazeau has an excellent post on taphonomy at The Lancelet reporting a paper in which folks let poor innocent critters rot in order to ascertain which anatomical features are likely to be preserved and which are likely to be lost before fossilization, and the implications for interpreting fossils of ‘soft’ tissues for phylogenetics.”
“The shell bed taphonomy is associated with a ceratopsian quarry from the Kaiparowits Formation in southern Utah.”
“There were several good talks in the morning on everything from plesiosaurs, to Deinosuchus in the Kaiparowits and Wahweap formations (in press), to taphonomy of dinosaur bonbeds in the Kaiparowits Formation (one of my favorite talks).”
“This area of study is termed taphonomy, and part of my palaeontological training has involved taphonomic interpretation of fossils as well as actualistic work on modern bodies and bones.”
“John will be talking about the taphonomy of the site, a project we started working on this past summer and preliminarily reported on at GSA this past year.”
“I actually used some of the info from it to open up a discussion of South African cave taphonomy, so it does come in handy.”
“Late Pleistocene sedimentology, taphonomy and megafauna extinction on the Darling Downs, southeastern Queensland.”
“The March 2008 issue of Palaios has two interesting taphonomy articles:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘taphonomy’.
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Archaeology
Words for shovelbums!
trowel, mattock, chopper, n-transform, c-transform, taphonomy, processual, post-processual, microarchaeology, site, horizon, battleship curve and 33 more...
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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Dinosaurs, extended
At first, this was a list for things found in Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History by David E. Fastovsky. But now it's degenerated a bit to contain anything dinosaur or fossil related.
disarticulate, body fossil, trace fossil, apatite, soft anatomy, permineralization, replacement, articulated, disarticulated, intestine’s-eye view, ichnofossil, paleoenvironment and 270 more...
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Words of Dinosaurology
This quickly got bigger and weirder than originally intended, so now it's housing terms that relate to the study of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. See also Dinosaurs, Pterosaurs, Ichthy...
zygopophyses, ziphodont, plesiomorphic, cleidoic, endothermy, ectothermy, viviparous, vertebrae, cervical, dorsal, sacral, caudal and 628 more...
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Words of the Times
Words discovered while reading The New York Times, each with a citation from the paper.
testilying, ghost talk, apneist, solastalgia, izakaya, hooker, telectroscope, airflyte, phomance, bromhidrosis, stinky feet, cupping and 482 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, T
torquate, thalassocracy, toothsome, travois, tempestuous, tone, tincture, tripwire, tether, trill, tenacious, travesty and 355 more...
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Biology
malacological, cladistic, phenetic, phylogenetic, taxonomy, bathypelagic, superfamily, superorder, infraorder, binomen, binominal, quorum sensing and 199 more...
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döden
about death in its different forms.
euthanasia, autopsy, post mortem, disinter, rigor mortis, necropolis, requiem, epitaph, exhumation, sepulchre, sarcophagus, terminal burrowing and 60 more...
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words for evolution&paleontology
polymorphism, paraphyletic, monophyletic, stasis, mutation, drift, diversity, darwinian, lamarkian, bambachian, convergence, homoplasy and 11 more...
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Daily
thaumaturgy, lagniappe, gabble, Cytherean, samizdat, lixiviate, quintal, Rabelaisian, prescind, duende, deglutition, mancinism and 69 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for taphonomy.
Prolagus Yes. Everything that happens between death and fossilization. Jan 1, 2009
john “The sciences of taphonomy — how bodies decompose and eventually become stone — and paleontology have allowed us to piece together many details of ancient ecosystems.�?
The New York Times, Reflections on an Oyster, by Olivia Judson, December 30, 2008 Jan 1, 2009