Soft Tissue Preservation in Terrestrial Mesozoic Vertebrates

Exceptionally preserved fossils—i.e., those that retain, in some manner, labile components of organisms that are normally degraded far too quickly to enter the fossil record—hold the greatest potential for understanding aspects of the biology of long-extinct animals and are the best targets for the search for endogenous biomolecules. Yet the modes of preservation of these labile components, and exactly what remains of the original composition,...