Re: Do fossils lie?

G'Day Peter

Peter Jason wrote:
> 
> Has anyone considered that fossils in the ground may deform over
> time so leading to erroneous conclusions.  The human fossil record
> depends heavily on the subtle shapes of crania etc and this record
> may be all wrong if ground water and earth shifts leach and deform
> shapes.
> Peter Jason

Fossils don't lie, but they may not tell the whole truth :-)
 
There is a whole scientific discipline based on problems of that kind, 
taphonomy: the study of the processes (burial, decay, and preservation)
that affect animal and plant remains as they become fossilised.  Any
paleontologist publishing a fossil should be on the lookout for that
kind of problem, but that is not to say they do not occasionally slip
through.  

One thing that helps is that post-mortem deformation tends to be
uni-directional, typically objects with circular cross-sections flatten
to elipses with the short axis up and down (in terms of how the fossil
was deposited).  It may be a factor in a few very subtle cases, but
generally a professional would spot the signs and make allowance (if
this has occured to a particular specimen).

        Regards
                Paul