Watching Fish Rot, For Science

Thomas Clements dissects fish as part of his research on rot. The tally on his lab coat tracks the number of dissections he has completed. THOMAS CLEMENTS

Paleontology typically conjures images of digging up dusty bones in the field. So why is paleontologist Thomas Clements watching fish rot in the laboratory? Clements specializes in taphonomy, a subfield within paleontology that deals with the process of fossilization. To understand why some tissues become fossils while others decay away, he sometimes has to get his hands dirty.

Read my whole story at The Scientist: Researchers Watch Fish Rot, For Science.