The gal who discovered collagen and and soft tissue remnants inside T-rex bones said she was inspired to look because of the "smell" fossil bones have.
"she noticed that the fossil exuded a distinctly organic odor. "It smelled just like one of the cadavers we had in the lab who had been treated with chemotherapy before he died," she says. Given the conventional wisdom that such fossils were made up entirely of minerals, Schweitzer was anxious when mentioning this to Horner."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/schweitzers-dangerous-discovery
That’s very interesting.
Maybe some of what’s left after bacteria are done is stable, and in some sort of vapor equilibrium in a confined space.
Interesting. I was thinking the dogs might have seen the odd pattern.
My sister had a Golden Retriever. You could take a baseball sized rock from the stream bed and throw it into the creek. That dog would bring back the same rock you threw - I guess from your scent on the rock.