[f. FOSSILIZE v. + -ATION. Cf. F. fossilisation.]
1. The action or process of fossilizing; the conversion of vegetable and animal remains into fossils.
1819. G. S. Faber, Dispensations (1823), I. 124. The human species alone, with a strange exception to a general rule, entirely escaped fossilization.
1827. G. Higgins, Celtic Druids, 142. Let the person who doubts the age of the world, draw up one of the piles driven into the Danube by Trajan, and see how far in it the process of fossilization has proceeded.
1872. Nicholson, Palæont., 3. Fossilisation may be applied in a general sense to all the processes through which an organic body passes in order to become a fossil.
2. The process of becoming, or state of having become, antiquated.
1886. [see FLUIDITY 1 b.]
