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

Waptia fieldensis is an extinct species of arthropod from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale Lagerstätte of Canada. It grew to a length of about8 cm (3 in) and resembled modern shrimp in both morphology and habit. It had a large bivalved carapace and a segmented body terminating into a pair of tail flaps. It was an active swimmer, feeding on organic particles it gathers from the seafloor substrate.

Based on the number of individuals, Waptia fieldensis is the third most abundant arthropod from the Burgess Shale Formation, with thousands of specimens collected. It was among the first fossils found by the American paleontologist Charles D. Walcott in 1909. He described it in 1912 and named it after two mountains near the discovery site – Wapta Mountain and Mount Field.

Waptia fieldensis is the only species classified under the genus Waptia. Although it bears a remarkable resemblance to modern crustaceans, its taxonomic affinities remain unclear. It is currently classified as a stem group crustacean and tentatively included in the clade Crustaceomorpha. (see more...)

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Did you know?

... that in the first scientific study of fossils in English, William Martin speculated that horn coral (pictured) was a kind of bamboo and said another fossil was not a small crocodile tail?
... that the extinct ants Azteca alpha carried larvae of the nematode Formicodiplogaster myrmenema?
... that fossils of the extinct snakefly family Mesoraphidiidae are known mainly from the Northern Hemisphere?
... that Acteosaurus tommasinii, a species of aquatic lizard from the upper Cretaceous is similar to mosasauroids and modern snakes?
... that the last common ancestor of bilaterian animals has been reconstructed as a tiny worm with a combined mouth and anus?

An illustration of a fossil of Prodryas persephone

... that the extinct Eocene butterfly Prodryas persephone (pictured) from the Florissant Fossil Beds is the best preserved fossil lepidopteran discovered to date?
...that despite being known from many specimens, the fossil Fuxianhuia remains one of the most controversial Cambrian arthropods?
... that paleobotanist Shya Chitaley named an extinct plant species for Cleveland's bicentennial and also had an extinct plant species named for her?
... that Araneagryllus is named from a combination of the Latin aranea meaning "spider" and gryllus meaning "cricket"?
... that fossil specimens of the extinct scorpionfly family Dinopanorpidae, which includes Dinopanorpa and Dinokanaga, sometimes have preserved dark with light to clear color patterning?

More did you know facts

General images - load new batch

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

Image 1A complete Anomalocaris fossil from the Burgess shale (from History of paleontology)
Image 2Illustration from William Smith's Strata by Organized Fossils (1817) (from History of paleontology)
Image 3Illustration of the fossil jaw of the Stonesfield mammal from Gideon Mantell's 1848 Wonders of Geology (from History of paleontology)
Image 4Johann Jakob Scheuchzer tried to explain fossils using Biblical floods in his Herbarium of the Deluge (1709). (from History of paleontology)
Image 5First 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 6Diagram 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 7Fossil of the Taung child discovered in South Africa in 1924 (from History of paleontology)
Image 8Duria 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 9Geologic time scale from an 1861 book by Richard Owen shows the appearance of major animal types. (from History of paleontology)
Image 10Stephan Endlicher (from List of paleontologists)
Image 11Illustration from Steno's 1667 paper shows a shark head and its teeth along with a fossil tooth for comparison. (from History of paleontology)
Image 12Philippe-Charles Schmerling (from List of paleontologists)
Image 13A drawing comparing jaws was added in 1799 when Cuvier's 1796 presentation on living and fossil elephants was published. (from History of paleontology)
Image 14Illustration of fossil Iguanodon teeth with a modern iguana jaw for comparison from Mantell's 1825 paper describing Iguanodon (from History of paleontology)
Image 15Photograph of the second Archaeopteryx skeleton to be found, taken in 1881 at the Natural History Museum, Berlin (from History of paleontology)
Image 16A Spriggina fossil from the Ediacaran (from History of paleontology)
Image 17Elmer Riggs and H.W. Menke in Field Columbian Museum's paleontology lab, 1899 (from History of paleontology)

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Selected article on paleontology in human science, culture and economics

Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, a new anti-Aristotelian approach to modern science challenged traditional essentialism. Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of paleontology with the concept of extinction further undermined the static view of nature. In the early 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first fully formed theory of evolution.

In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory that was explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposedcommon descent and a branching tree of life. The theory was based on the idea of natural selection, and it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology.

The debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during the 1920s through the 1940s. Before that time most biologists argued that other factors were responsible for evolution. The synthesis of natural selection with Mendelian genetics during the 1920s and 1930s founded the new discipline of population genetics. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology—the modern evolutionary synthesis. (see more...)

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On this day...

May 28:

1822 - Tiberius Cornelis Winkler was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
1891 - Peter Martin Duncan died.
1922 - Giovanni Capellini died in Bologna, Italy at age 88.

Feeding Mechanics in Spinosaurid Theropods and Extant Crocodilians

Andrew R. Cuff, Emily J. Rayfield

published 28 May 2013

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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