system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is it that the remains of dinosaurs and other ancient living things were able to escape the fate of being consumed by scavengers, and decomposed by bacteria long enough to become preserved as fossils?
gpt
It's very rare. Fossilization is an extremely uncommon process that involves a lot of specific circumstances, including quick protection of the remains from scavenging and decomposition, such as by burial in a mudslide, not to mention certain forms of preservation like gentle, mineralized water flow (as one example) to gradually replace the original organic material with hardier substances that can persist through the ages.

The reality is that the *vast majority* of dinosaurs and other ancient living things were *not* preserved, not any more than modern things will be, but were destroyed by scavengers and decomposition. We only find the extremely rare cases where they were not.