Fully dressed and preserved 350-year-old corpse of French noblewoman found

Re:Fully dressed and preserved 350-year-old corpse of French... by JamisonM on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @02:05PM (#9654608)

If you dry up before you can really get rotting you will be pretty well preserved. The bottom line of that being that if your corpse is well-prepared before burial and your casket happens to be either well-sealed or otherwise escape water penetration for the period you are buried you will be in pretty good shape 300 years on.

There are a lot of ways a dead body can stay dry and a lot of dead bodies out there to discover.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Fully dressed and preserved 350-year-old corpse of French... by fencepost on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @05:29PM (#9656001)

There are also some other conditions that can result in surprising preservation, such as alkaline conditions leading to saponification (basically turning body fat into a soap-like substance).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Fully dressed and preserved 350-year-old corpse of French... by userbinator on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @05:23PM (#9655965)

Another example of that would be the mummies in Egypt that lasted >4k years in a hot, dry place.

[ Parent | on HN ]