Palaeontology

Palaeontology or paleontology (/ˌpeɪlɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/, /ˌpeɪlɪənˈtɒlədʒi/ or /ˌpælɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/, /ˌpælɪənˈtɒlədʒi/) is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments (their palaeoecology). Palaeontologist observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anat Palaeontology or paleontology (/ˌpeɪlɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/, /ˌpeɪlɪənˈtɒlədʒi/ or /ˌpælɪɒnˈtɒlədʒi/, /ˌpælɪənˈtɒlədʒi/) is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments (their palaeoecology). Palaeontologist observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term itself originates from Greek παλαιός, palaios, i.e. "old, ancient", ὄν, on (gen. ontos), i.e. "being, creature" and λόγος, logos, i.e. "speech, thought, study".

Palaeontology lies on the border between biology and geology, but differs from archaeology in that it excludes the study of anatomically modern humans. It now uses techniques drawn from a wide range of sciences, including biochemistry, mathematics and engineering. Use of all these techniques has enabled palaeontologists to discover much of the evolutionary history of life, almost all the way back to when Earth became capable of supporting life, about 3,800 million years ago. As knowledge has increased, palaeontology has developed specialised sub-divisions, some of which focus on different types of fossil organisms while others study ecology and environmental history, such as ancient climates.

Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life, and geochemical evidence has helped to decipher the evolution of life before there were organisms large enough to leave body fossils. Estimating the dates of these remains is essential but difficult: sometimes adjacent rock layers allow radiometric dating, which provides absolute dates that are accurate to within 0.5%, but more often palaeontologists have to rely on relative dating by solving the "jigsaw puzzles" of biostratigraphy. Classifying ancient organisms is also difficult, as many do not fit well into the Linnean taxonomy that is commonly used for classifying living organisms, and palaeontologists more often use cladistics to draw up evolutionary "family trees". The final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics, which investigates how closely organisms are related by measuring how similar the DNA is in their genomes. Molecular phylogenetics has also been used to estimate the dates when species diverged, but there is controversy about the reliability of the molecular clock on which such estimates depend. ...more

Palaeontology Books

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology (The Rediscovered Series)

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World

When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time

The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs

The Great Dinosaur Debate: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction

The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times

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Lists

When Life Nearly Died by Michael J. Benton

Life on a Young Planet by Andrew H. Knoll

The 10 Books You Absolutely Must Read to Understand the History of Earth

29 books — 24 voters

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

The Great Dinosaur Debate by Robert T. Bakker

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Álvarez

The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory S. Paul

The Best Non-fiction Dinosaur Books

144 books — 97 voters

The Application of Ichnology to Palaeoenvironmental And Strat... by Geological Society

Ichnology of New England by Edward Hitchcock

The Study of Trace Fossils by Ralph Wylie Frey

Ichnology, the study of traces

80 books — 2 voters

Technological Slavery by Theodore John Kaczynski

Anti-Tech Revolution by Theodore John Kaczynski

Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore John Kaczynski

The Human Animal

145 books — 102 voters

Learn about prehistoric life

51 books — 46 voters

Mary Anning's Curiosity by Monica Kulling

Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins

Stone Girl, Bone Girl by Laurence Anholt

Mary Anning - Fiction & Non-Fiction

22 books — 13 voters

Related Genres

Science
Biology
Archaeology
Dinosaurs
Geology

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Quotes Tagged “Palaeontology”

“ The holes in front of us were fossilized tracks, huge ones. Dinosaur tracks, no doubt. As we looked closer, we could see that there were both handprints and footprints, and some of them had finger and toe marks. They had the telltale shape of tracks left by sauropods. We had found a 170-million-year-old dinosaur dance floor, records left by colossal sauropods that were about fifty feet long and weighed as much as three elephants. ”
― Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World

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“ The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion. ”
― Gareth J. Nelson

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