Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

The fossil record is far from being a complete library of everything that's ever lived.

The vast, vast majority of everything that's ever lived has completely decayed away,

bones and all, even for animals that have bones and shells.

So fossilization is a very rare occurrence.

Duncan Murdoch, a research fellow at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

But then if you play the numbers game and think about how many organisms have lived,

then fossilization is kind of ultimately inevitable that some things will get into the fossil record.

But what parts of an organism fossilize and in which stage of decomposition can vary,

meaning it can be hard to reconstruct a living animal from what's represented in rock.

Plus, most of the fossil record is bones and teeth.

To find any evidence of the soft tissue of ancient animals is incredibly rare.

So to learn more about that process of decay and fossilization that can preserve soft tissue,

Murdoch and his team dissect marine animals like hagfish and lamp rays as they lie rotting in the lab.

The study of how organisms become preserved is called tephanomy, and it can stink.

Yeah, I mean, it's certainly a very smelly place to work sometimes.

Smelly, but it gives them a step-by-step look at how creatures' bodies change as they decay.

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