(/)
Because these parts of the body are composed of minerals, material that is not part of the menu of the bacteria that digest us in the cemetery. These single-celled beings feed on organic matter – the material that makes up our tissues, basically made up of carbon atoms. It is exactly in this bacterial activity that the process of putrefaction consists. Bones and teeth, on the other hand, are formed by inorganic compounds, in which calcium phosphate predominates, substances that do not rot. This, however, does not mean that they have not changed over the years. “What happens to bones and teeth is the substitution of one mineral for another over time”, says physiologist José Carlos de Freitas, from USP. It is a process of fossilization that takes millennia: in place of the original material, minerals present in the land where the corpse is located.