= Body fossil
A <body fossil> preserves evidence of an <organism>'s body or a part of it, such as a <tooth>, <bone>, shell or <leaf>. Preservation can retain original material, a mineralized structure, an impression or a cast. A <body fossil> therefore need not be an intact body or contain the original organic substances.
A <trace fossil>, such as a footprint or burrow, records activity rather than the body itself. Both are biological evidence, but they answer different questions: a <tooth> can constrain <anatomy>, whereas a trackway can constrain movement. Decay experiments show why preserved <anatomy> requires care: some characters disappear before others, biasing the apparent similarities used in <phylogenetics>.<Non-random decay of chordate characters causes bias in fossil interpretation by Robert S. Sansom and others>[Experimental character-loss sequences and their consequences for fossil reconstruction]{ref}
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