July 20, 2012Yes under the right conditions. The actual onset is very quick, or else every skeleton would be completely gone in a matter of months, years or decades. But the process itself continues until all the carbon 14 is gone and replaced by carbon 12. Very little other sediment to leech carbon 14 from here.
To be fossilized/petrified/preserved you need almost perfect or ideal conditions, sediments, burial, and usually a sudden incident, landslide, or a volcanic eruption creating vitrified glass layers etc. that preserves the thing all in the context it was left. Artifacts are actually a lot more rare than most people think because of how perfect things have to be. Something may start the process but ultimately end up being disturbed by geological processes and will start to deteriorate before completely fossilizing. That's why it's not fossilized, the gases would have eventually worn away at it before it got a chance to fossilize. The best it could be is mummified.
There is something to be said for how the alien genetics work by breaking things down, creating something different from elements, rewriting things and recombining them, and the idea that death or deterioration is inevitable unless you allow something to completely change you at a molecular level. What most people don't know is even though these things appear hard on the surface. The bonds between carbon molecules are incredibly different. And under the surface are just waiting to be exposed to a lot of oxygen and moisture, but I'll have to work on that and how that applies to the outside layer of the mummy appearing fossilized later.
Look into what happens to mummies when they're unwrapped and exposed to air for the first time in 1000's of years without proper care being taken to inject, spray and use all sort of fluids and preservatives to prevent them from crumbling to dust before your very eyes in the presence of oxygen.
I can feel even more death and resurrection/mummy themes in my bones already...
