Can anyone point to accurate analysis as to the time periods taken to turn a human bone, or any bone, into stone.
All links and info would be most welcome.
Cheers
IJ
Fossils are by definition at least 10,000 years old. And there are lots of preservation methods that are lumped under the name “fossilization.” See the wiki entry and some of the associated pages. See also this page. So how long it takes for a fossil to form depends on the type of preservation. Hundreds of years. Thousands of years. If the soil around becomes very hard very fast and is highly acidic and highly mineral-rich water oozes it, replacement could in theory be less than hundreds. And in other conditions, traces of the original material are still there after tens of millions of years.
So the short answer is–more or less–who the hell knows?
Need answer fast?
But that date is arbitrary as you say and something 6000 years old (to pick a random example… 
) *could *be as fully mineralized as something 100 000 years old, given the right conditions. I’ve never been a fan of that arbitrary date.
But perhaps people posting here should be aware of the OP’s other related thread…
I’m thinking this’ll get more response over in General Questions. I’ll move it over there for you.
The definitions for “fossil” and “fossilize” are not very precise. Dictionary definitions of “fossil” often just say that it is any remains or traces of plants or animals found buried in the earth. Sometimes they also indicate that the remains have been petrified. None of the definitions I have seen seem to be inclusive of all the senses in which paleontologists use the word. The most common definition of “fossilize” is “to convert into a fossil,” which isn’t very helpful. Some definitions include that the remains have been petrified. But there are also cast and trace fossils to which this definition wouldn’t apply.
The OP seems to be using “fossilize” in the sense of “become petrified.” As has been noted, there is no necessary relationship between time and petrification. Bones in a wet cave permeated with water with a high mineral content could become mineralized in a few hundred years, maybe even faster. Bones in a dry cave could be virtually unchanged for tens of thousands of years. (Such remains are also referred to as “subfossil”). As has been mentioned, organic matter can be preserved for tens of millions of years.
I’m kind of curious as to when the 10,000-year definition first became widespread, and who proposed it. It’s not something I recall as being current decades ago. Certainly it appears a lot on the internet, but Wiki only cites the website of the San Diego Natural History Museum rather than any primary source, and I haven’t found any primary source elsewhere. The figure just seems to based on convenience as a round figure near the end of the Pleistocene. In any case, it doesn’t have any relationship to whether organic remains have been petrified or not.
Dozens of tens of millions of years, even.
Well of course–50 years ago the standard was 9,950 years… (I’ve also heard the guidelines that for something to be antique it must be 100 years old and to be ancient it must be 1,000 years old–more round numbers.)
That’s like the old joke about the visitor who asks the museum security guard “How old is this dinosaur skeleton?” He replies, “Seventy million and six years.” The visitor asks in astonishment, “How do you know so exactly?” The guard says, “The sign said seventy million when I started working here six years ago, so I figure it must be that much older now.”
Carbon dating is referenced to 1950. Any time you see a scientist use BP (before present) the date of the present is 1950.
Since most dating has an error band of at least 50 years, that can throw off true dating by a century.
That’s why a variety of formal standards of expression exist. Any good scientific paper will specify how the dating is handled and, if necessary in the historic era, give a range of true dates as well.
That’s also why amateurs get so easily lost when trying to pretend to be scientists. They don’t know even entry-level jargon.
I haven’t posted a Buffy quote in a long while, so here it is:
Buffy: A Guide, but no food or water. So it leads me to the sacred place, and then a week later it leads you to my bleached bones?
**Giles: **Buffy, please… It takes more than a week to bleach bones.