Solved cryptogram
Almost nothing that ever lived became a fossil. It takes burial fast enough to beat decay.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to U.S. National Park Service.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 73 letters over 20 different ones, graded medium.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
A dead animal is normally eaten, scattered and rotted within weeks. Fossilization needs the remains covered quickly by sediment, in water or in a place where oxygen cannot reach, and then minerals seeping in to replace the tissue. That favors creatures with hard parts living in shallow seas or river deltas. Whole ways of life left no trace at all, so the fossil record is not a sample of the past so much as a biased one.
The claim comes from U.S. National Park Service.
- SourceU.S. National Park Service
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length73 letters, 20 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- U.S. Geological Surveymedium, 78 letters
- U.S. Geological Surveymedium, 73 letters
- U.S. National Park Servicemedium, 72 letters
- U.S. National Park Servicemedium, 77 letters
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Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
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