Fossils are usually the remains of hard structures such as bones. But in rare circumstances, soft tissues are fossilised. The fossils can be as small as microbes or even individual molecules such as some fats. Identifying these organisms or molecules can reveal information about the diets of ancient animals, their lifestyle and the environment in which they lived. Kliti Grice at Curtin University in Perth has built a reputation for investigating soft tissue fossils and her work has revealed information about mass extinction events such as that which happened at the end of the Permian Period, about 252 million years ago.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/fossilised-soft-tissues-help-piece-together-the-story-of-life/102136712

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