How to maximise your chances of being fossilised

[creative666]

If you fancy being dug up and discovered in 20,000 years, you need to start planning ahead now!

For starters, I could try to get frozen somewhere cold and stable. After all, prehistoric people have been found inside Alpine glaciers, such as Oetzi, a man who lived around 5,000 years ago. Or I could go lie down in a desert cave, so long as I sealed myself off from scavengers. Ancient remains up to 10,000 years old have been found preserved in dry caves in Peru. And then there are peat bogs.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220324-how-to-maximise-your-chances-of-being-fossilised

[rcjordan]

How is it that the bodoes of the recently dead are sacrosanct but after a couple of hundred years they become public display items?

[buckworks]

>> after a couple of hundred years

Related: what difference is there between an archaeologist and a tomb robber?

[ergophobe]

>> sacrosanct

Well, it works the other way too. Your poop from this morning is a disgusting waste product that must be handled in private with all manner of sanitary precautions. But give it 14,000 years or 230 million years and suddenly it's a museum piece.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/14000-year-old-poop-among-oldest-traces-humans-north-america-180975426/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/02/world/new-beetle-species-fossil-dinosaur-feces-scn/index.html

>>between an archaeologist and a tomb robber?

Sounds like a prelude to a joke. At the risk of going all serious and missing the joke, this article is relevant
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-troy-180979553/

It discusses the return of artifacts, who is doing it, who is resisting doing it, under what circumstances and so forth. It is certainly contentious and the differentiation between archeologist and robber is less obvious than in the past, not to mention that many artifacts in European and American museums are the product of pure plunder.

I think the traditional answer is that an archeologist is more interested in "context" and story than in the artifacts themselves. An archeologist therefore takes great care to preserve and study context. A tomb robber is only interested in artifacts and resale value and is only interested in context insofar as it increases the value of the plunder. Archeologists will often tell you that an object without context is essentially worthless to them.

https://www.thoughtco.com/context-in-archaeology-167155

In modern archeology, the archeologists are typically working under agreement with local cultural institutions and do not have the right nor the habit of expatriating objects.