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The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the ...
The simplest definition of "paleontology" is "the study of ancient life". [7] The field seeks information about several aspects of past organisms: "their identity and origin, their environment and evolution, and what they can tell us about the Earth's organic and inorganic past".
Bust of the paleontologist Georges Cuvier (left) and a cast skeleton of Palaeotherium magnum (named by Cuvier in 1804, right), Cuvier Museum of Montbéliard. Paleontology (/ ˌ p eɪ l i ɒ n ˈ t ɒ l ə dʒ i, ˌ p æ l i-,-ən-/ PAY-lee-on-TOL-ə-jee, PAL-ee-, -ən-), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to the start of the ...
Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in Germany in the 1850s and the second in France more than a century later. Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens.
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to study the fossil record left behind by ancient life forms. Although fossils had been studied by scholars since ancient times, the nature of fossils and their relationship to life in the past became better understood during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Classic paleoecology uses data from fossils and subfossils to reconstruct the ecosystems of the past. It involves the study of fossil organisms and their associated remains (such as shells, teeth, pollen, and seeds), which can help in the interpretation of their life cycle, living interactions, natural environment, communities, and manner of death and burial.
Paleontologists from Argentina announced the discovery of a new medium-sized herbivorous dinosaur, which was a fast runner and lived about 90 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period in ...
[1] [2] The field of molecular paleontology has yielded important insights into evolutionary events, species' diasporas, the discovery and characterization of extinct species. In shallow time , advancements in the field of molecular paleontology have allowed scientists to pursue evolutionary questions on a genetic level rather than relying on ...