Sediment-encased maturation: a novel method for simulating diagenesis in organic fossil preservation

Exceptional fossils can preserve diagenetically-altered biomolecules, and understanding the pathways to such preservation is vital to utilising fossil information in evolutionary and palaeoecological studies. Experimental taphonomy explores the stability of tissues during microbial/autolytic decay or their molecular stability through maturation under high pressure and temperature. Maturation experiments are often hampered by the fact that maturation occurs inside sealed containers, which does not allow for the loss of labile, mobile, or volatile molecules. On the other hand, maturation of tissues wrapped inside aluminium foil can sometimes be too open of a system, leading to loss of both labile and recalcitrant materials. Here we present a novel experimental procedure for maturing tissues under elevated pressure/temperature inside compacted sediment. In this procedure, porous sediment allows for labile maturation breakdown products to escape from the sample into the sediment and maturat...