Wild Anklebiters are hybrid monsters; part tunneling leech, part flower. This hybrid nature grants them extra vitality, which is conferred to objects or creatures that kill them. This is called Vivification.
If a normal monster dies by natural causes, its magic goes haywire and creates Drops. These Drops are infused with monster essence. However, that extra vitality I mentioned earlier makes it so Anklebiters dead by natural cases enter a sort of stasis, much like a Hollywood zombie, instead of blowing apart or rotting away. And that extra essence is just sitting there, preserving the shell, just waiting to be absorbed by whatever absorbs the Anklebiter's remains.
But what if they aren't absorbed? Ever hear how fossils form? Or jet, a form of petrified wood? It usually involves sediment and water. If those remains, filled with lingering life essence, were to get petrified, the result would be stone with life in it. But-this would only happen if the stone was formed of or incorporated the Anklebiter's biological material. This leaves carbonation, perimineralization, or whatever the process of jet forming is called.
Better yet, this is somewhat feasible-leeches are aquatic, many plants can survive submerged at least temporarily, and Anklebiters live all over (their distribution is rather like dandelions, but they look more like tulips, just cone-shaped with pointy petals) so they can be found in the right environments for these processes to take hold of their remains.
(They're not found primarily in these environments, they're just abundant in general and can be found in these environments, if that helps.)
Even then, here is my problem: I don't know enough about how fossilization works. What kind of environment and conditions are required to A) preserve Anklebiter remains in sediment and B) see those same remains not only preserved but bound to minerals (to make a fossil) or metamorphosed into something like coal to make a stone. This is especially problematic, because Anklebiters are basically worms stuck inside and fused with a herbaceous flower, and both worms and herbaceous flowers aren't known for becoming well-preserved.
With that in mind, my question is to determine if Anklebiters can realistically get fossilized in such a way as to create numerous deposits of living stone. Whether there's a shot of the fossils happening, and how likely it is, so I can determine if enough 'living rocks' could form to create a new species. That is my question.
Please assume that the time passed is sufficient for fossils or jet to have formed from Anklebiters if such a thing is possible; this question assumes that it is theoretically possible, but is meant to determine if it is realistically possible.
Finally, please note monster Drops or removed parts (think Monster Hunter) naturally contain some monster essence. Pluck a leaf from an Anklebiter, it'll hold a sliver of the full Vivification Enchantment. Thus, the husk left behind by an Anklebiter perishing, if infused with minerals (fossilized) or carbonated (turned into coal) will hold Vivification and be more or less alive. Once again, this is what I'm looking at, whether these living stones can be realistically created in large numbers.
A Description of Anklebiters:
To try and clear things up, Anklebiters are like protists, but evolved into a relatively large stage. In other words, they are much like herbaceous flowers, in form and also in cell biology (cell walls and chloroplasts) but also different in many ways. They possess setae and secrete mucus, they have ganglion at the center of their nervous network to help dictate decisions (much like an octopus), their petals and sepals are tough and flexible like tentacles, with the petals even possessing hard-to-see spines to aid in prey capture, and the center of the flower may resemble anthers or a stigma, but close inspection or dissection will reveal a surprisingly leechlike mouth.
They even reproduce much like flowers, producing unfertilized eggs within their bodies and then depositing them within the flower, where symbiotic bugs end up carrying them to other Anklebiters. However, instead of pollen, they produce toxic globules that are dispersed by the air to weaken and confuse prey so they can feed.
