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Fossil preparation is a complex of tasks that can include excavating, revealing, conserving, and replicating the ancient remains and traces of organisms. It is an integral part of the science of paleontology, of museum exhibition, and the preservation of fossils held in the public trust.
Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeography), and the evolutionary history of plants, with a bearing upon the evolution of life in general.
The mineralization process helps prevent tissue compaction, distorting organs' actual size. A permineralized fossil will also reveal much about an organism's environment and the substances found in it since it preserves soft body parts. This helps researchers investigate the plants, animals, and microbes of different periods.
Cuticle analysis, also known as fossil cuticle analysis and cuticular analysis, is an archaeobotanical method that uses plant cuticles to reconstruct the vegetation of past grassy environments. Cuticles comprise the protective layer of the skin, or epidermis , of leaves and blades of grass.
Fusulinid from the Plattsmouth Chert, Red Oak, Iowa ().Micropaleontology can be roughly divided into four areas of study on the basis of microfossil composition: (a) calcareous, as in coccoliths and foraminifera, (b) phosphatic, as in the study of some vertebrates, (c) siliceous, as in diatoms and radiolaria, or (d) organic, as in the pollen and spores studied in palynology.
In some instances, the original structure of the stem tissue may be partially retained. Unlike other plant fossils, which are typically impressions or compressions, petrified wood is a three-dimensional representation of the original organic material. The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried in water or volcanic ash.
Although common sense suggests that volume and density are three dimensional and thickness is one dimensional, observations on various materials, including fossil plants of known shape [10] show that while under conditions of static vertical load, soils and fossils are maintained by pressure at the side.
The International Fossil Plant Names Index (acronym IFPNI) is an online database of paleobotany.The site was launched in May 2014 to list the scientific names of fossil plants, algae, fungi, allied prokaryotic forms (formerly treated as algae and Cyanophyceae in particular), algal-related protists and microfossils published using binomial nomenclature.