Paleontology facts for kids
Palaeontology or Paleontology is the study of fossils of living things, and their phylogeny (evolutionary relationships). It depends on basic sciences such as zoology, botany and historical geology. The term palaeobiology implies that the study will investigate the palaeoecology of the groups in question.
In palaeozoology, the evolution of those phyla with fossil records are studied: see List of animal phyla. In palaeobotany, fossil plants are studied. In historical geology the formation, sequence and dating of rock strata give information about past environments.
A fossil is any kind of life that is more than ten thousand years old and preserved in any form that we can study today. The fossil record is always incomplete, and later discoveries may extend the known survival of a group. See Lazarus taxon.
Some palaeontologists study fossils of microorganisms, living things that are too small to see without a microscope, while other palaeontologists study fossils of giant dinosaurs.
- Vertebrate palaeontology: the palaeontology of vertebrate animals
- Invertebrate palaeontology: the palaeontology of invertebrate animals
Related pages
Images for kids
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The preparation of the fossilised bones of Europasaurus holgeri
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Analyses using engineering techniques show that Tyrannosaurus had a devastating bite, but raise doubts about its running ability.
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This Marrella specimen illustrates how clear and detailed the fossils from the Burgess Shale lagerstätte are
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Cambrian trace fossils including Rusophycus, made by a trilobite
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Climactichnites---Cambrian trackways (10–12 cm wide) from large, slug-like animals on a Cambrian tidal flat in what is now Wisconsin.
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This wrinkled "elephant skin" texture is a trace fossil of a non-stromatolite microbial mat. The image shows the location, in the Burgsvik beds of Sweden, where the texture was first identified as evidence of a microbial mat.
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Opabinia sparked modern interest in the Cambrian explosion
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At about 13 centimetres (5.1 in) the Early Cretaceous Yanoconodon was longer than the average mammal of the time
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Birds are the only surviving dinosaurs
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This illustration of an Indian elephant jaw and a mammoth jaw (top) is from Cuvier's 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants.
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First mention of the word palæontologie, as coined in January 1822 by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in his Journal de physique.
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Haikouichthys, from about 518 million years ago in China, may be the earliest known fish
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See also
In Spanish: Paleontología para niños
