Portal:Paleontology

The Palaeontology Portal

Introduction

Paleontology (/ˌpeɪliɒnˈtɒlədʒi, ˌpæli-, -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 Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). 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, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. 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. Use of all these techniques has enabled paleontologists to discover much of the evolutionary history of life, almost back to when Earth became capable of supporting life, nearly 4 billion years ago. As knowledge has increased, paleontology 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. (Full article...)

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Selected article on the prehistoric world and its legacies

Artist's restoration of Nigersaurus taqueti.

Nigersaurus (meaning "Niger reptile") is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived during the middle Cretaceous period, about 115 to 105 million years ago. It was discovered in the Elrhaz Formation in an area called Gadoufaoua, in the Republic of Niger. Fossils of this dinosaur were first described in 1976, but it was only named in 1999 after further and more complete remains were found and described. The genus contains a single species, Nigersaurus taqueti.

Nigersaurus was 9 m (30 ft) long, which is small for a sauropod, and had a short neck. It weighed around four tonnes, comparable to a modern elephant. Its skeleton was filled with air spaces connected to air sacs, but the limbs were robustly built. Its skull was very specialised for feeding, with a wide muzzle filled with more than 500 teeth. The jaws may have borne a keratinous sheath. Unlike other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull, so that all of its teeth were located far to the front.

Nigersaurus was probably a browser, and fed with its head close to the ground. It lived in a riparian habitat, and its diet probably consisted of soft plants, such as ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It is one of the most common fossil vertebrates found in the area, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, as well as large theropods and crocodylomorphs. (see more...)

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Did you know?

A Zophotermes ashoki preserved in amber

... that the extinct termite Zophotermes ashoki is named after a "sage of Indian paleontology"?
... that the extinct North American Oligocene-age vulture Phasmagyps may be the oldest New World vulture?
... that leaves of the fossil maple Acer palaeorufinerve resemble the living redvein maple?
... that the extinct planthopper Tainosia quisqueyae was named for the Taíno people and Hispaniola?
... that the extinct bivalve subfamily Praenuculinae can be told apart from its sister subfamily by looking at teeth?

A life restoration of Kulindroplax

... that Kulindroplax is the first known mollusk showing an unambiguous combination of exterior shells and a worm-like body?
... that the name for the extinct birch family genus Kardiasperma is from the Greek words for "heart" and "seed"?
... that the fossil ant genus Archiponera is known from a single pair of fossils described in 1930?
... that Algeripithecus, a 46–50 million year old fossil primate, was once crucial for the African origins of simians (monkeys and apes), but now suggests African origins for lemurs and lorisoids?
... that at the time of description, the extinct Tilia johnsoni (pictured) was the oldest basswood macrofossil occurrence?

More did you know facts

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various paleontology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1A Spriggina fossil from the Ediacaran (from History of paleontology)
Image 2Illustration of fossil Iguanodon teeth with a modern iguana jaw for comparison from Mantell's 1825 paper describing Iguanodon (from History of paleontology)
Image 3A drawing comparing jaws was added in 1799 when Cuvier's 1796 presentation on living and fossil elephants was published. (from History of paleontology)
Image 4Stephan Endlicher (from List of paleontologists)
Image 5Illustration of the fossil jaw of the Stonesfield mammal from Gideon Mantell's 1848 Wonders of Geology (from History of paleontology)
Image 6Fossil of the Taung child discovered in South Africa in 1924 (from History of paleontology)
Image 7Illustration from Steno's 1667 paper shows a shark head and its teeth along with a fossil tooth for comparison. (from History of paleontology)
Image 8A complete Anomalocaris fossil from the Burgess shale (from History of paleontology)
Image 9Geologic time scale from an 1861 book by Richard Owen shows the appearance of major animal types. (from History of paleontology)
Image 10First mention of the word palæontologie, as coined in January 1822 by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in his Journal de physique (from History of paleontology)
Image 11Elmer Riggs and H.W. Menke in Field Columbian Museum's paleontology lab, 1899 (from History of paleontology)
Image 12Duria Antiquior – A more Ancient Dorset is a watercolor painted in 1830 by the geologist Henry De la Beche based on fossils found by Mary Anning. The late 18th and early 19th century was a time of rapid and dramatic changes in ideas about the history of life on earth. (from History of paleontology)
Image 13Illustration from William Smith's Strata by Organized Fossils (1817) (from History of paleontology)
Image 14Diagram by O.C. Marsh of the evolution of horse feet and teeth, reproduced in T. H. Huxley's 1876 book, Professor Huxley in America (from History of paleontology)
Image 15Johann Jakob Scheuchzer tried to explain fossils using Biblical floods in his Herbarium of the Deluge (1709). (from History of paleontology)
Image 16Philippe-Charles Schmerling (from List of paleontologists)
Image 17Photograph of the second Archaeopteryx skeleton to be found, taken in 1881 at the Natural History Museum, Berlin (from History of paleontology)

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Selected article on paleontology in human science, culture and economics

A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. Therefore, we can't assume transitional fossils are direct ancestors of more recent groups, though they are frequently used as models for such ancestors.

In 1859, when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published, the fossil record was poorly known. Indeed, Archaeopteryx was discovered just two years later and represents a classic transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. Many more transitional fossils have been discovered since then, and there is now abundant evidence of how all classes of vertebrates are related, much of it in the form of transitional fossils. The phrase missing link has been used extensively in popular writings on human evolution to refer to a perceived gap in the hominid evolutionary record. It is most commonly used to refer to any new transitional fossil finds. Scientists, however, do not use the term, as it refers to a pre-evolutionary view of nature. (see more...)

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On this day...

May 23:

1847 - Robert Etheridge, Junior was born in Cheltenham, England.
1864 - Arthur Smith Woodward was born in Macclesfield, England.
1873 - Nikolai Yakovlevich Kuznetsov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia.
1905 - Myra Keen was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.

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Selected image

Fossil shell of the parkinsoniid ammonoid Parkinsonia parkinsoni. The shell dates back to the Bajocian age of the Middle Jurassic epoch and is about 14.5 cm in diameter. It was collected in Evrecy, France.
Photo credit: H. Zell