Palaeontologists deduced two things from this. The first is that the land animals and plants were washed into the lakes very gently, or were already in the lakes when they died. They do not show the damage seen in fossils formed by large floods. Second, volcanic ash is commonly interbedded with lake sediments, and ashfalls seem to have quickly buried the fossilized organisms, created anoxic conditions around them, and prevented scavenging.