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The simplest definition of "paleontology" is "the study of ancient life". [5] 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 ...
Hence, paleontology overlaps with geology (the study of rocks and rock formations) as well as with botany, biology, zoology and ecology – fields concerned with life forms and how they interact. The major subdivisions of paleontology include paleozoology (animals), paleobotany (plants) and micropaleontology ( microfossils ).
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 ...
Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils. [1] This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised feces (), palynomorphs and chemical residues.
Palaeozoology, also spelled as Paleozoology (Greek: παλαιόν, palaeon "old" and ζῷον, zoon "animal"), is the branch of paleontology, paleobiology, or zoology dealing with the recovery and identification of multicellular animal remains from geological (or even archeological) contexts, and the use of these fossils in the reconstruction of prehistoric environments and ancient ecosystems.
To analyze human remains of the past, different techniques are used depending on the type of remains that are found. For example, "the approach to palaeopathological samples depends on the nature of the sample itself (e.g. bone, soft tissue or hair), its size (from minimal fragments to full bodies), the degree of preservation and, very importantly, the manipulation allowed (from intact sample ...
Molecular paleontology refers to the recovery and analysis of DNA, proteins, carbohydrates, or lipids, and their diagenetic products from ancient human, animal, and plant remains. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The field of molecular paleontology has yielded important insights into evolutionary events, species' diasporas , the discovery and characterization of ...