Most important for me to preserve would be my wife -- by a long way.
The recovery of a wooden artifact so old and well preserved would be remarkable under any circumstances, but this one contained something curious.
Furthermore, the continuum of benthic, near-shore, and fully terrestrial substrate interactions that many of these species engage in create a variety of impressions that, once preserved, would be equally difficult to match to environment.
Indeed, if today's regulatory climate had been applied a century or two ago, the American cities that people most want to preserve would be shells of themselves.
Due to the generally low biomass, the quantity of organic compounds preserved would be diluted by the preserving mineral medium.
"To preserve it would be to devalue it.
There was reason to believe that unless that differential was preserved, they would be driven out of business.
Preserved mammoths would be found, not in ice, but in the frozen dirt of permafrost.
If I had to choose only one food to preserve, it would be tomatoes.
