Taphonomy is frequently defined as the science of fossil preservation. To those only vaguely acquainted with it, it deals with death, decay, and disintegration, and is the science of dead, rotting things accompanied by a terrific stench. It is what one is often glibly treated to in the first laboratory of a historical geology or paleontology course about molds, casts, and carbon films, before the course moves on, presumably to more important things.

But taphonomy is much more than that. Taphonomy is concerned with the information content of the fossil record and the processes by which fossils are incorporated into the fossil record. Traditionally, taphonomists and non-taphonomists alike have emphasized information loss, but with the publication of Behrensmeyer and Kidwell's (1985) seminal paper, there has been a groundswell of research about information gain. The fossil record is a rich source of information about phenomena that occur over temporal scales that far exceed those of a human generation, and that often occur so slowly that they appear constant to us, if we are cognizant of them at all; moreover, the stratigraphic record suggests that we cannot simply scale upward from ecological to geological scales.