Name: KGMS November Meeting
Start: 2025-11-20T19:30:00-05:00
Location: 2931 Fawver Ln, Knoxville, TN 37914-9505, United States

"How to Make a Dinosaur Mummy: Applying Forensic Principles to a Paleontological Quandary"
So-called dinosaurian "mummies" are unusual examples of soft tissue preservation in the fossil record. Usually found in isolation, these exceedingly rare specimens provide a wealth of information about dinosaurian anatomy and physiology. However, how they form in the first place has been the subject of significant confusion. Soft tissue preservation is often thought to require rapid burial under chemical conditions that will hinder decomposition. Dinosaurian mummies often show signs of natural drying, suggesting long exposure time at the surface prior to burial, which runs counter to these assumptions. Recent preparation of an unusually well-preserved mummy of Edmontosaurus revealed the unexpected role scavengers might play in this process. Partial consumption of the internal organs can, perhaps somewhat unintuitively, promote drying of the skin that is left behind, as the fluids, gases, and microbes associated with decomposition are allowed to escape the decomposing remains. These results are supported by research in the field forensic anthropology, and research is ongoing to replicate these human- and mammal-based studies with reptilian analogs. This comparatively common pathway to stabilize skin pre-burial extends the survival of these tissues for weeks to months and explains why dinosaurian skin is more commonly preserved than might be expected otherwise.
Dr. Stephanie Drumheller is an associate teaching professor in the University of Tennessee Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. She received her PhD from the University of Iowa in 2013. She is interested in understanding the evolution and behavior and the fossilization of archosaurs, especially theropod dinosaurs, crocodylians, and their closest fossil relatives. Her research brings together ichnology (the study of behavioral traces) and taphonomy (the study of all the processes that move, modify, or destroy remains after death) to ask questions about diet, feeding strategy, and preservation in the fossil record.