"Paleontology 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)."
Paleontology is the study of fossils and ancient life forms. It helps us understand the history of life on Earth and the way that species have evolved over time.
Geology: The study of rocks, minerals, and the processes that shape the Earth's crust, which is important in determining the geological history of a fossil site and the age of fossils.
Biology: The scientific study of life, which is important in understanding the anatomy, physiology, and behavior of extinct organisms.
Anatomy: The study of the structure of organisms, which is important in understanding how extinct organisms were adapted to their environments.
Evolution: The study of how living things change over time, which is important in understanding how different species evolved and diversified over millions of years.
Stratigraphy: The study of rock layers and layering, which is important in determining the relative age of fossils and the sequence of geological events that occurred at a given site.
Paleobiology: The study of ancient life forms and the environment in which they lived, which is important in understanding the evolution and diversity of life on Earth.
Paleoecology: The study of ancient ecosystems and the interactions between organisms and their environment, which is important in understanding how extinct organisms lived and their role in ancient ecosystems.
Taphonomy: The study of the processes that affect an organism from death to fossilization, which is important in understanding how fossils are formed and preserved.
"It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology)."
"Paleontological 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."
"The term has been used since 1822 formed from Greek παλαιός ('palaios', 'old, ancient'), ὄν ('on', (gen. 'ontos'), 'being, creature'), and λόγος ('logos', 'speech, thought, study')."
"Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology, but it 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."
"As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialized 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."
"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 paleontologists 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 Linnaean taxonomy classifying living organisms, and paleontologists 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 the similarity of the DNA 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."