This is 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 incredible. 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

Tifonomy 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.

The first signs that the animal is decay... at how creatures bodies change as they decay.

The first signs that the animal is decaying

is the very softest tissues like the guts

and the eyes start to decay away

and then find structures like the gills and then things like the fins start to

fall off and you start to see the skin falling apart.

...