Better source here:.
”We noticed that there had been very little degradation since it was originally fossilised about 18 million years ago, making it the highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”
In other words, these were soft tissue fossils, not "fresh meat".
I have read several articles and papers on this find now, and they all say the flesh was “organically preserved.”
PS Supposedly ancient organically preserved soft tissue discoveries are known as “fresh meat” finds.
from the article you quoted:
“According to the University College Dublin geologists, the muscle tissue is organically preserved in three dimensions, with circulatory vessels infilled with blood.”
That means it is not petrified, does it not?
“According to the University College Dublin geologists, the muscle tissue is organically preserved in three dimensions, with circulatory vessels infilled with blood”
I don’t know it sounds like it is still fleshy but very tiny little pockets and parts.
Not so!
"Scientists have extracted organically preserved muscle tissue from an 18 million years old salamander fossil. The discovery by researchers from University College Dublin, the UK and Spain, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that soft tissue can be preserved under a broader set of fossil conditions than previously known."
Their use of the term "fossilized" simply means encased in rock in this case.
"We came across the muscle tissue during our analysis of several hundred fossil samples taken from an ancient lake bed in Southern Spain. It was immediately identifiable by the sinewy texture visible under the microscope"
Soft tissue! Not mineralized. Were this sample even 20,000 years old it would have mostly converted to methane and leaked out of the rock by now.