Skeletonized organic remains display various modes of occurrence which may be used to better understand the sedimentary dynamics of strata within which they occur. Aspects of skeleton biostratinomy and early diagenesis are distributed nonrandomly within the stratigraphic record and, therefore, are useful in discriminating taphonomic facies. For purposes of taphonomic comparisons, skeletonized marine taxa are reduced to five generally defined types: massive, arborescent, univalved bivalved, and multielement. Different skeletal types display different attributes which reflect specific responses to physical, chemical, and/or biological processes. The taphonomic properties of disarticulation, reorientation and sorting, fragmentation, corrosion and abrasion, skeletal dissolution, and early diagenesis display patterns which are predictable with respect to a variety of inter-related physico-chemical parameters. These can be quantified through indices which evaluate relative frequencies of occurrence. Sedimentary events alter the temporal and spatial homogeneity of processes which generate background taphofacies and superimpose event-related properties, thereby generating composite taphofacies. Such events produce taphonomic signature which in themselves correspond to specific environmental conditions; i.e., water depth and event intensity. Indeed, background and event-related processes interact to generate complex, but nonetheless diagnostic facies attributes useful in reconstructing paleoenvironments. The comparison of standard indices among beds should allow the recognition of stratigraphic patterns and facilitate the diagnosis of systematic gradients among taphonomic properties. Deductively-derived taphofacies models, corroborated by empirical data from Paleozoic strata, illustrate the distribution of taphonomic properties with respect to environmental energy (turbulence), background sedimentation rate, and sediment oxygenation. These parameters also indirectly influence other, less obvious factors including bioturbation and sediment chemistry. Trends in the distribution of taphonomic properties (taphonomic gradients) permit us to map otherwise unrecognized trends in these environmental parameters across a hypothetical onshore-offshore transect within a generalized epeiric sea setting. Taphofacies models provide the quantifiable basis by which evolution of taphofacies may be gauged and then related to biotic and abiotic phenomena. Moreover, taphofacies models evaluate the preservability of skeletal remains in different environmental settings and therefore provide information important in paleoecological studies.