Chitin is a biological material found in the cuttlebones, or internal shells, of cuttlefish. It has a maximum shelf life of thousands of years, and yet researchers recently verified—using three separate techniques, multiple laboratories, and careful material handling—that samples of chitin from fossils had the same basic chemistry as modern chitin.

Many believe that fossils represent organisms that died millions of years ago. Scientific literature, however, contains dozens of well-described original soft tissues in fossils. Since laboratory tests have shown that organic tissues decay in only thousands of years, these fossils have been at the center of much heated controversy.

In 1993, a fossil of a long-tailed bird was found in China that still contained feathers and bones. The fossilized Confuciusornis sanctus is supposedly 120 million years old, but observation has shown that original organic materials such as bones and feathers break down in just thousands of years, even if bacteria aren't present.

The Green River Formation, a sedimentary feature of Wyoming and northern Colorado, is widely recognized for its high quality fossils of fish and other creatures. It has been dated at 40 million years and older. What are the odds, then, of original soft tissue fossils being found encased in its rock?

Among land-dwelling arthropods, the sheer number of just ants and beetles that live and die each year is phenomenal. And ocean krill exist in even higher numbers. Each of these creatures leaves behind an exoskeleton. If it were not for remarkably efficient exoskeleton-eating microbes, the earth would quickly fill up with arthropod carcasses.