Preserving Things! You know like Fossils and beef jerky!

What a thought, Food and fossils in the same place at the same time!

April 7th

Compare preserving food to preserving fossils. Use at least three examples from McGhee to form the basis of your comparisons.

In studying the preservation of food it is clear that the some styles used are designed to slow, stop, and capture the natural decomposing of the food product itself. The nature of this process does not lend itself very well to that of the preserving of fossils. An example of how these processes are different can be found in the fact that when freezing and refrigerating meats and vegetables the goal is to preserve the muscles, cells and tissues of the organism, where as in the preserving of fossils the meat, tissue, and cells naturally decompose or become eaten by predators and scavengers.

For another type of preserving of food products like canning we can see some similarities in how fossils are persevered. A good example of this is when canning food you are required to rapidly heat the container storing the food encapsulating the food that is to be persevered in a air tight seal, In the case of a fossil a large amount of soil or hot earth can encapsulate a animal and provide a somewhat sealed environment and with the added heat and pressure of the earth produce a fossil of the trapped animal or organism.

Finally the preservation style of drying though at first could seem like a promising similarity is found to be reversed by the fact that fossils must come in contact with water in order to have the many layers of sediment form over the top of them.

Disclaimer: I’m very new to this field of study, so please do not take my word for fact or any kind of right answer. Thank you.