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Paleontology

February 15, 2024

"Palaeontology" redirects here. For the Science journal, see Palaeontology (journal).

Paleontology (/ˌpeɪliɒnˈtɒlədʒi, ˌpæli-, -ən-/), also spelled palaeontology[a] or palæontology, 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). 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[1][b] formed from Greek παλαιός ('palaios', "old, ancient"), ὄν ('on', (gen. 'ontos'), "being, creature"), and λόγος ('logos', "speech, thought, study").[3]

A paleontologist at work at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

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 all the way back to when Earth became capable of supporting life, nearly 4 billion years ago.[4] 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.

Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life, and 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 (arrangement of rock layers from youngest to oldest). 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.

Overview edit

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".[6]

Historical science edit

 
The preparation of the fossilised bones of Europasaurus holgeri

William Whewell (1794–1866) classified paleontology as one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, philology and history itself:[7] paleontology aims to describe phenomena of the past and to reconstruct their causes.[8] Hence it has three main elements: description of past phenomena; developing a general theory about the causes of various types of change; and applying those theories to specific facts.[9] When trying to explain the past, paleontologists and other historical scientists often construct a set of one or more hypotheses about the causes and then look for a "smoking gun", a piece of evidence that strongly accords with one hypothesis over any others.[10] Sometimes researchers discover a "smoking gun" by a fortunate accident during other research. For example, the 1980 discovery by Luis and Walter Alvarez of iridium, a mainly extraterrestrial metal, in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer made asteroid impact the most favored explanation for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – although debate continues about the contribution of volcanism.[8]

A complementary approach to developing scientific knowledge, experimental science,[11] is often said[by whom?] to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena. This approach cannot prove a hypothesis, since some later experiment may disprove it, but the accumulation of failures to disprove is often compelling evidence in favor. However, when confronted with totally unexpected phenomena, such as the first evidence for invisible radiation, experimental scientists often use the same approach as historical scientists: construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a "smoking gun".[8]

Related sciences edit

Paleontology lies between biology and geology since it focuses on the record of past life, but its main source of evidence is fossils in rocks.[12][13] For historical reasons, paleontology is part of the geology department at many universities: in the 19th and early 20th centuries, geology departments found fossil evidence important for dating rocks, while biology departments showed little interest.[14]

Paleontology also has some overlap with archaeology, which primarily works with objects made by humans and with human remains, while paleontologists are interested in the characteristics and evolution of humans as a species. When dealing with evidence about humans, archaeologists and paleontologists may work together – for example paleontologists might identify animal or plant fossils around an archaeological site, to discover the people who lived there, and what they ate; or they might analyze the climate at the time of habitation.[15]

In addition, paleontology often borrows techniques from other sciences, including biology, osteology, ecology, chemistry, physics and mathematics.[5] For example, geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth,[16] and analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and even to explain major transitions such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[17] A relatively recent discipline, molecular phylogenetics, compares the DNA and RNA of modern organisms to re-construct the "family trees" of their evolutionary ancestors. It has also been used to estimate the dates of important evolutionary developments, although this approach is controversial because of doubts about the reliability of the "molecular clock".[18] Techniques from engineering have been used to analyse how the bodies of ancient organisms might have worked, for example the running speed and bite strength of Tyrannosaurus,[19][20] or the flight mechanics of Microraptor.[21] It is relatively commonplace to study the internal details of fossils using X-ray microtomography.[22][23] Paleontology, biology, archaeology, and paleoneurobiology combine to study endocranial casts (endocasts) of species related to humans to clarify the evolution of the human brain.[24]

Paleontology even contributes to astrobiology, the investigation of possible life on other planets, by developing models of how life may have arisen and by providing techniques for detecting evidence of life.[25]

Subdivisions edit

As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialised subdivisions.[26] Vertebrate paleontology concentrates on fossils from the earliest fish to the immediate ancestors of modern mammals. Invertebrate paleontology deals with fossils such as molluscs, arthropods, annelid worms and echinoderms. Paleobotany studies fossil plants, algae, and fungi. Palynology, the study of pollen and spores produced by land plants and protists, straddles paleontology and botany, as it deals with both living and fossil organisms. Micropaleontology deals with microscopic fossil organisms of all kinds.[27]

 
Analyses using engineering techniques show that Tyrannosaurus had a devastating bite, but raise doubts about its running ability.

Instead of focusing on individual organisms, paleoecology examines the interactions between different ancient organisms, such as their food chains, and the two-way interactions with their environments.[28]  For example, the development of oxygenic photosynthesis by bacteria caused the oxygenation of the atmosphere and hugely increased the productivity and diversity of ecosystems.[29] Together, these led to the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells, from which all multicellular organisms are built.[30]

Paleoclimatology, although sometimes treated as part of paleoecology,[27] focuses more on the history of Earth's climate and the mechanisms that have changed it[31] – which have sometimes included evolutionary developments, for example the rapid expansion of land plants in the Devonian period removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect and thus helping to cause an ice age in the Carboniferous period.[32]

Biostratigraphy, the use of fossils to work out the chronological order in which rocks were formed, is useful to both paleontologists and geologists.[33] Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms, and is also linked to geology, which explains how Earth's geography has changed over time.[34]

Sources of evidence edit

Body fossils edit

Main article: Fossil
 
This Marrella specimen illustrates how clear and detailed the fossils from the Burgess Shale lagerstätte are.

Fossils of organisms' bodies are usually the most informative type of evidence. The most common types are wood, bones, and shells.[35] Fossilisation is a rare event, and most fossils are destroyed by erosion or metamorphism before they can be observed. Hence the fossil record is very incomplete, increasingly so further back in time. Despite this, it is often adequate to illustrate the broader patterns of life's history.[36] There are also biases in the fossil record: different environments are more favorable to the preservation of different types of organism or parts of organisms.[37] Further, only the parts of organisms that were already mineralised are usually preserved, such as the shells of molluscs. Since most animal species are soft-bodied, they decay before they can become fossilised. As a result, although there are 30-plus phyla of living animals, two-thirds have never been found as fossils.[5]

Occasionally, unusual environments may preserve soft tissues.[38] These lagerstätten allow paleontologists to examine the internal anatomy of animals that in other sediments are represented only by shells, spines, claws, etc. – if they are preserved at all. However, even lagerstätten present an incomplete picture of life at the time. The majority of organisms living at the time are probably not represented because lagerstätten are restricted to a narrow range of environments, e.g. where soft-bodied organisms can be preserved very quickly by events such as mudslides; and the exceptional events that cause quick burial make it difficult to study the normal environments of the animals.[39] The sparseness of the fossil record means that organisms are expected to exist long before and after they are found in the fossil record – this is known as the Signor–Lipps effect.[40]

Trace fossils edit

 
Cambrian trace fossils including Rusophycus, made by a trilobite
 
Climactichnites — Cambrian trackways (10–12 cm wide) from large, slug-like animals on a Cambrian tidal flat in what is now Wisconsin
Main article: Trace fossil

Trace fossils consist mainly of tracks and burrows, but also include coprolites (fossil feces) and marks left by feeding.[35][41] Trace fossils are particularly significant because they represent a data source that is not limited to animals with easily fossilised hard parts, and they reflect organisms' behaviours. Also many traces date from significantly earlier than the body fossils of animals that are thought to have been capable of making them.[42] Whilst exact assignment of trace fossils to their makers is generally impossible, traces may for example provide the earliest physical evidence of the appearance of moderately complex animals (comparable to earthworms).[41]

Geochemical observations edit

Main article: Geochemistry

Geochemical observations may help to deduce the global level of biological activity at a certain period, or the affinity of certain fossils. For example, geochemical features of rocks may reveal when life first arose on Earth,[16] and may provide evidence of the presence of eukaryotic cells, the type from which all multicellular organisms are built.[43] Analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to explain major transitions such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[17]

Classifying ancient organisms edit

Main articles: Biological classification, Cladistics, Phylogenetic nomenclature, and Evolutionary taxonomy
 
Levels in the Linnaean taxonomy

Naming groups of organisms in a way that is clear and widely agreed is important, as some disputes in paleontology have been based just on misunderstandings over names.[44] Linnaean taxonomy is commonly used for classifying living organisms, but runs into difficulties when dealing with newly discovered organisms that are significantly different from known ones. For example: it is hard to decide at what level to place a new higher-level grouping, e.g. genus or family or order; this is important since the Linnaean rules for naming groups are tied to their levels, and hence if a group is moved to a different level it must be renamed.[45]

Tetrapods

Amphibians

Amniotes
Synapsids

Extinct Synapsids

   

Mammals

Reptiles

Extinct reptiles

Lizards and snakes

Archosaurs

Extinct
Archosaurs

Crocodilians

Dinosaurs
 ? 

Extinct
Dinosaurs


 ? 

Birds

Simple example cladogram
    Warm-bloodedness evolved somewhere in the
synapsid–mammal transition.
 ?  Warm-bloodedness must also have evolved at one of
these points – an example of convergent evolution.[5]

Paleontologists generally use approaches based on cladistics, a technique for working out the evolutionary "family tree" of a set of organisms.[44] It works by the logic that, if groups B and C have more similarities to each other than either has to group A, then B and C are more closely related to each other than either is to A. Characters that are compared may be anatomical, such as the presence of a notochord, or molecular, by comparing sequences of DNA or proteins. The result of a successful analysis is a hierarchy of clades – groups that share a common ancestor. Ideally the "family tree" has only two branches leading from each node ("junction"), but sometimes there is too little information to achieve this, and paleontologists have to make do with junctions that have several branches. The cladistic technique is sometimes fallible, as some features, such as wings or camera eyes, evolved more than once, convergently – this must be taken into account in analyses.[5]

Evolutionary developmental biology, commonly abbreviated to "Evo Devo", also helps paleontologists to produce "family trees", and understand fossils.[46] For example, the embryological development of some modern brachiopods suggests that brachiopods may be descendants of the halkieriids, which became extinct in the Cambrian period.[47]

Estimating the dates of organisms edit

Main article: Geochronology
 
Calyptraphorus
velatus
Tropites
subbullatus
Leptodus
americanus
Cactocrinus
multibrachiatus
Dictyoclostus
americanus
Cystiphyllum
niagarense
Bathyurus extans
Neptunea tabulata
Venericardia
planicosta
Inoceramus
labiatus
Nerinea trinodosa
Monotis
subcircularis
Lophophyllidium
proliferum
Prolecanites gurleyi
Palmatolepus
unicornis
Hexamocaras hertzeri
Tetragraptus fructicosus
Billingsella corrugata
 
Common index fossils used to date rocks in the northeast United States

Paleontology seeks to map out how living things have changed through time. A substantial hurdle to this aim is the difficulty of working out how old fossils are. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating. This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better.[48] Although radiometric dating requires very careful laboratory work, its basic principle is simple: the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known, and so the ratio of the radioactive element to the element into which it decays shows how long ago the radioactive element was incorporated into the rock. Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin, and so the only fossil-bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are a few volcanic ash layers.[48]

Consequently, paleontologists must usually rely on stratigraphy to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the "layer-cake" that is the sedimentary record, and has been compared to a jigsaw puzzle.[49] Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers, with each layer younger than the one underneath it. If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known, the fossil's age must lie between the two known ages.[50] Because rock sequences are not continuous, but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion, it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly next to one another. However, fossils of species that survived for a relatively short time can be used to link up isolated rocks: this technique is called biostratigraphy. For instance, the conodont Eoplacognathus pseudoplanus has a short range in the Middle Ordovician period.[51] If rocks of unknown age are found to have traces of E. pseudoplanus, they must have a mid-Ordovician age. Such index fossils must be distinctive, be globally distributed and have a short time range to be useful. However, misleading results are produced if the index fossils turn out to have longer fossil ranges than first thought.[52] Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy can in general provide only relative dating (A was before B), which is often sufficient for studying evolution. However, this is difficult for some time periods, because of the problems involved in matching up rocks of the same age across different continents.[52]

Family-tree relationships may also help to narrow down the date when lineages first appeared. For instance, if fossils of B or C date to X million years ago and the calculated "family tree" says A was an ancestor of B and C, then A must have evolved more than X million years ago.

It is also possible to estimate how long ago two living clades diverged – i.e. approximately how long ago their last common ancestor must have lived – by assuming that DNA mutations accumulate at a constant rate. These "molecular clocks", however, are fallible, and provide only a very approximate timing: for example, they are not sufficiently precise and reliable for estimating when the groups that feature in the Cambrian explosion first evolved,[53] and estimates produced by different techniques may vary by a factor of two.[18]

History of life edit

 
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.[54]
Main article: Evolutionary history of life
Further information: Timeline of evolutionary history of life

Earth formed about 4,570 million years ago and, after a collision that formed the Moon about 40 million years later, may have cooled quickly enough to have oceans and an atmosphere about 4,440 million years ago.[55][56] There is evidence on the Moon of a Late Heavy Bombardment by asteroids from 4,000 to 3,800 million years ago. If, as seems likely, such a bombardment struck Earth at the same time, the first atmosphere and oceans may have been stripped away.[57]

Paleontology traces the evolutionary history of life back to over 3,000 million years ago, possibly as far as 3,800 million years ago.[58] The oldest clear evidence of life on Earth dates to 3,000 million years ago, although there have been reports, often disputed, of fossil bacteria from 3,400 million years ago and of geochemical evidence for the presence of life 3,800 million years ago.[16][59] Some scientists have proposed that life on Earth was "seeded" from elsewhere,[60][61][62] but most research concentrates on various explanations of how life could have arisen independently on Earth.[63]

For about 2,000 million years microbial mats, multi-layered colonies of different bacteria, were the dominant life on Earth.[64] The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis enabled them to play the major role in the oxygenation of the atmosphere[29] from about 2,400 million years ago. This change in the atmosphere increased their effectiveness as nurseries of evolution.[65] While eukaryotes, cells with complex internal structures, may have been present earlier, their evolution speeded up when they acquired the ability to transform oxygen from a poison to a powerful source of metabolic energy. This innovation may have come from primitive eukaryotes capturing oxygen-powered bacteria as endosymbionts and transforming them into organelles called mitochondria.[58][66] The earliest evidence of complex eukaryotes with organelles (such as mitochondria) dates from 1,850 million years ago.[30]

 
Opabinia sparked modern interest in the Cambrian explosion.

Multicellular life is composed only of eukaryotic cells, and the earliest evidence for it is the Francevillian Group Fossils from 2,100 million years ago,[67] although specialisation of cells for different functions first appears between 1,430 million years ago (a possible fungus) and 1,200 million years ago (a probable red alga). Sexual reproduction may be a prerequisite for specialisation of cells, as an asexual multicellular organism might be at risk of being taken over by rogue cells that retain the ability to reproduce.[68][69]

The earliest known animals are cnidarians from about 580 million years ago, but these are so modern-looking that must be descendants of earlier animals.[70] Early fossils of animals are rare because they had not developed mineralised, easily fossilized hard parts until about 548 million years ago.[71] The earliest modern-looking bilaterian animals appear in the Early Cambrian, along with several "weird wonders" that bear little obvious resemblance to any modern animals. There is a long-running debate about whether this Cambrian explosion was truly a very rapid period of evolutionary experimentation; alternative views are that modern-looking animals began evolving earlier but fossils of their precursors have not yet been found, or that the "weird wonders" are evolutionary "aunts" and "cousins" of modern groups.[72] Vertebrates remained a minor group until the first jawed fish appeared in the Late Ordovician.[73][74]

 
At about 13 centimetres (5.1 in) the Early Cretaceous Yanoconodon was longer than the average mammal of the time.[75]

The spread of animals and plants from water to land required organisms to solve several problems, including protection against drying out and supporting themselves against gravity.[76][77][78][79] The earliest evidence of land plants and land invertebrates date back to about 476 million years ago and 490 million years ago respectively.[78][80] Those invertebrates, as indicated by their trace and body fossils, were shown to be arthropods known as euthycarcinoids.[81] The lineage that produced land vertebrates evolved later but very rapidly between 370 million years ago and 360 million years ago;[82] recent discoveries have overturned earlier ideas about the history and driving forces behind their evolution.[83] Land plants were so successful that their detritus caused an ecological crisis in the Late Devonian, until the evolution of fungi that could digest dead wood.[32]

 
Birds are the only surviving dinosaurs.[84]

During the Permian period, synapsids, including the ancestors of mammals, may have dominated land environments,[85] but this ended with the Permian–Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago, which came very close to wiping out all complex life.[86] The extinctions were apparently fairly sudden, at least among vertebrates.[87] During the slow recovery from this catastrophe a previously obscure group, archosaurs, became the most abundant and diverse terrestrial vertebrates. One archosaur group, the dinosaurs, were the dominant land vertebrates for the rest of the Mesozoic,[88] and birds evolved from one group of dinosaurs.[84] During this time mammals' ancestors survived only as small, mainly nocturnal insectivores, which may have accelerated the development of mammalian traits such as endothermy and hair.[89] After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago[90] killed off all the dinosaurs except the birds, mammals increased rapidly in size and diversity, and some took to the air and the sea.[91][92][93]

Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants appeared and rapidly diversified in the Early Cretaceous between 130 million years ago and 90 million years ago.[94] Their rapid rise to dominance of terrestrial ecosystems is thought to have been propelled by coevolution with pollinating insects.[95] Social insects appeared around the same time and, although they account for only small parts of the insect "family tree", now form over 50% of the total mass of all insects.[96]

Humans evolved from a lineage of upright-walking apes whose earliest fossils date from over 6 million years ago.[97] Although early members of this lineage had chimp-sized brains, about 25% as big as modern humans', there are signs of a steady increase in brain size after about 3 million years ago.[98] There is a long-running debate about whether modern humans are descendants of a single small population in Africa, which then migrated all over the world less than 200,000 years ago and replaced previous hominine species, or arose worldwide at the same time as a result of interbreeding.[99]

Mass extinctions edit

 CambrianOrdovicianSilurianDevonianCarboniferousPermianTriassicJurassicCretaceousPaleogeneNeogene
Marine extinction intensity during the Phanerozoic
%
Millions of years ago
 CambrianOrdovicianSilurianDevonianCarboniferousPermianTriassicJurassicCretaceousPaleogeneNeogene
Apparent extinction intensity, i.e. the fraction of genera going extinct at any given time, as reconstructed from the fossil record (graph not meant to include recent epoch of Holocene extinction event)
Main article: Mass extinction

Life on earth has suffered occasional mass extinctions at least since 542 million years ago. Despite their disastrous effects, mass extinctions have sometimes accelerated the evolution of life on earth. When dominance of an ecological niche passes from one group of organisms to another, this is rarely because the new dominant group outcompetes the old, but usually because an extinction event allows a new group, which may possess an advantageous trait, to outlive the old and move into its niche.[100][101][102]

The fossil record appears to show that the rate of extinction is slowing down, with both the gaps between mass extinctions becoming longer and the average and background rates of extinction decreasing. However, it is not certain whether the actual rate of extinction has altered, since both of these observations could be explained in several ways:[103]

  • The oceans may have become more hospitable to life over the last 500 million years and less vulnerable to mass extinctions: dissolved oxygen became more widespread and penetrated to greater depths; the development of life on land reduced the run-off of nutrients and hence the risk of eutrophication and anoxic events; marine ecosystems became more diversified so that food chains were less likely to be disrupted.[104][105]
  • Reasonably complete fossils are very rare: most extinct organisms are represented only by partial fossils, and complete fossils are rarest in the oldest rocks. So paleontologists have mistakenly assigned parts of the same organism to different genera, which were often defined solely to accommodate these finds – the story of Anomalocaris is an example of this.[106] The risk of this mistake is higher for older fossils because these are often unlike parts of any living organism. Many "superfluous" genera are represented by fragments that are not found again, and these "superfluous" genera are interpreted as becoming extinct very quickly.[103]
 
All genera
"Well-defined" genera
Trend line
"Big Five" mass extinctions
Other mass extinctions
Million years ago
Thousands of genera
 
Phanerozoic biodiversity as shown by the fossil record

Biodiversity in the fossil record, which is

"the number of distinct genera alive at any given time; that is, those whose first occurrence predates and whose last occurrence postdates that time"[107]

shows a different trend: a fairly swift rise from 542 to 400 million years ago, a slight decline from 400 to 200 million years ago, in which the devastating Permian–Triassic extinction event is an important factor, and a swift rise from 200 million years ago to the present.[107]

History edit

Main article: History of paleontology
Further information: Timeline of paleontology
 
This illustration of an Indian elephant jaw and a mammoth jaw (top) is from Cuvier's 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants.

Although paleontology became established around 1800, earlier thinkers had noticed aspects of the fossil record. The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570–480 BCE) concluded from fossil sea shells that some areas of land were once under water.[108] During the Middle Ages the Persian naturalist Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in Europe, discussed fossils and proposed a theory of petrifying fluids on which Albert of Saxony elaborated in the 14th century.[108] The Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) proposed a theory of climate change based on the presence of petrified bamboo in regions that in his time were too dry for bamboo.[109]

In early modern Europe, the systematic study of fossils emerged as an integral part of the changes in natural philosophy that occurred during the Age of Reason. In the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci made various significant contributions to the field as well as depicted numerous fossils. Leonardo's contributions are central to the history of paleontology because he established a line of continuity between the two main branches of paleontology – ichnology and body fossil paleontology.[110][111][112] He identified the following:[110]

  1. The biogenic nature of ichnofossils, i.e. ichnofossils were structures left by living organisms;
  2. The utility of ichnofossils as paleoenvironmental tools – certain ichnofossils show the marine origin of rock strata;
  3. The importance of the neoichnological approach – recent traces are a key to understanding ichnofossils;
  4. The independence and complementary evidence of ichnofossils and body fossils – ichnofossils are distinct from body fossils, but can be integrated with body fossils to provide paleontological information
 
Georges Cuvier's 1812 sketch of a skeletal and muscle reconstruction of Anoplotherium commune. This sketch was amongst the first instances of prehistoric animal reconstructions based on fossil remains.

At the end of the 18th century Georges Cuvier's work established comparative anatomy as a scientific discipline and, by proving that some fossil animals resembled no living ones, demonstrated that animals could become extinct, leading to the emergence of paleontology.[113] The expanding knowledge of the fossil record also played an increasing role in the development of geology, particularly stratigraphy.[114] Cuvier proved that the different levels of deposits represented different time periods in the early 19th century. The surface-level deposits in the Americas contained later mammals like the megatheriid ground sloth Megatherium and the mammutid proboscidean Mammut (later known informally as a "mastodon"), which were some of the earliest-named fossil mammal genera with official taxonomic authorities. They today are known to date to the Neogene-Quaternary. In deeper-level deposits in western Europe are early-aged mammals such as the palaeothere perissodactyl Palaeotherium and the anoplotheriid artiodactyl Anoplotherium, both of which were described earliest after the former two genera, which today are known to date to the Paleogene period. Cuvier figured out that even older than the two levels of deposits with extinct large mammals is one that contained an extinct "crocodile-like" marine reptile, which eventually came to be known as the mosasaurid Mosasaurus of the Cretaceous period.[115]

 
First mention of the word palæontologie, as coined in January 1822 by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in his Journal de physique

The first half of the 19th century saw geological and paleontological activity become increasingly well organised with the growth of geologic societies and museums[116][117] and an increasing number of professional geologists and fossil specialists. Interest increased for reasons that were not purely scientific, as geology and paleontology helped industrialists to find and exploit natural resources such as coal.[108] This contributed to a rapid increase in knowledge about the history of life on Earth and to progress in the definition of the geologic time scale, largely based on fossil evidence. Although she was rarely recognised by the scientific community,[118] Mary Anning was a significant contributor to the field of palaeontology during this period; she uncovered multiple novel Mesozoic reptile fossils and deducted that what were then known as bezoar stones are in fact fossilised faeces.[119] In 1822 Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, editor of Journal de Physique, coined the word "palaeontology" to refer to the study of ancient living organisms through fossils.[120] As knowledge of life's history continued to improve, it became increasingly obvious that there had been some kind of successive order to the development of life. This encouraged early evolutionary theories on the transmutation of species.[121] After Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859, much of the focus of paleontology shifted to understanding evolutionary paths, including human evolution, and evolutionary theory.[121]

 
Haikouichthys, from about 518 million years ago in China, may be the earliest known fish[122]

The last half of the 19th century saw a tremendous expansion in paleontological activity, especially in North America.[123] The trend continued in the 20th century with additional regions of the Earth being opened to systematic fossil collection. Fossils found in China near the end of the 20th century have been particularly important as they have provided new information about the earliest evolution of animals, early fish, dinosaurs and the evolution of birds.[124] The last few decades of the 20th century saw a renewed interest in mass extinctions and their role in the evolution of life on Earth.[125] There was also a renewed interest in the Cambrian explosion that apparently saw the development of the body plans of most animal phyla. The discovery of fossils of the Ediacaran biota and developments in paleobiology extended knowledge about the history of life back far before the Cambrian.[72]

Increasing awareness of Gregor Mendel's pioneering work in genetics led first to the development of population genetics and then in the mid-20th century to the modern evolutionary synthesis, which explains evolution as the outcome of events such as mutations and horizontal gene transfer, which provide genetic variation, with genetic drift and natural selection driving changes in this variation over time.[125] Within the next few years the role and operation of DNA in genetic inheritance were discovered, leading to what is now known as the "Central Dogma" of molecular biology.[126] In the 1960s molecular phylogenetics, the investigation of evolutionary "family trees" by techniques derived from biochemistry, began to make an impact, particularly when it was proposed that the human lineage had diverged from apes much more recently than was generally thought at the time.[127] Although this early study compared proteins from apes and humans, most molecular phylogenetics research is now based on comparisons of RNA and DNA.[128]

Paleontology in the vernacular press edit

Books catered to the general public on paleontology include:

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Outside the United States
  2. ^ In 1822, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville used the French term palœontologie.[1] In 1838, Charles Lyell used the English term palæontology in Elements of Geology.[2]

References edit

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External links edit

  • Smithsonian's Paleobiology website
  • University of California Museum of Paleontology
  • The Paleontological Society
  • The Palaeontological Association
  • The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
  • The Paleontology Portal
  • "Geology, Paleontology & Theories of the Earth" – a collection of more than 100 digitised landmark and early books on Earth sciences at the Linda Hall Library

February 15, 2024
paleontology, palaeontology, redirects, here, science, journal, palaeontology, journal, also, spelled, palaeontology, palæontology, scientific, study, life, that, existed, prior, sometimes, including, start, holocene, epoch, roughly, years, before, present, in. Palaeontology redirects here For the Science journal see Palaeontology journal Paleontology ˌ p eɪ l i ɒ n ˈ t ɒ l e dʒ i ˌ p ae l i en also spelled palaeontology a or palaeontology 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 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 1 b formed from Greek palaios palaios old ancient ὄn on gen ontos being creature and logos logos speech thought study 3 A paleontologist at work at John Day Fossil Beds National MonumentPaleontology 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 all the way back to when Earth became capable of supporting life nearly 4 billion years ago 4 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 Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life and 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 arrangement of rock layers from youngest to oldest 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 Contents 1 Overview 1 1 Historical science 1 2 Related sciences 1 3 Subdivisions 2 Sources of evidence 2 1 Body fossils 2 2 Trace fossils 2 3 Geochemical observations 3 Classifying ancient organisms 4 Estimating the dates of organisms 5 History of life 5 1 Mass extinctions 6 History 7 Paleontology in the vernacular press 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 External linksOverview editThe 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 6 Historical science edit nbsp The preparation of the fossilised bones of Europasaurus holgeriWilliam Whewell 1794 1866 classified paleontology as one of the historical sciences along with archaeology geology astronomy cosmology philology and history itself 7 paleontology aims to describe phenomena of the past and to reconstruct their causes 8 Hence it has three main elements description of past phenomena developing a general theory about the causes of various types of change and applying those theories to specific facts 9 When trying to explain the past paleontologists and other historical scientists often construct a set of one or more hypotheses about the causes and then look for a smoking gun a piece of evidence that strongly accords with one hypothesis over any others 10 Sometimes researchers discover a smoking gun by a fortunate accident during other research For example the 1980 discovery by Luis and Walter Alvarez of iridium a mainly extraterrestrial metal in the Cretaceous Paleogene boundary layer made asteroid impact the most favored explanation for the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event although debate continues about the contribution of volcanism 8 A complementary approach to developing scientific knowledge experimental science 11 is often said by whom to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena This approach cannot prove a hypothesis since some later experiment may disprove it but the accumulation of failures to disprove is often compelling evidence in favor However when confronted with totally unexpected phenomena such as the first evidence for invisible radiation experimental scientists often use the same approach as historical scientists construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a smoking gun 8 Related sciences edit Paleontology lies between biology and geology since it focuses on the record of past life but its main source of evidence is fossils in rocks 12 13 For historical reasons paleontology is part of the geology department at many universities in the 19th and early 20th centuries geology departments found fossil evidence important for dating rocks while biology departments showed little interest 14 Paleontology also has some overlap with archaeology which primarily works with objects made by humans and with human remains while paleontologists are interested in the characteristics and evolution of humans as a species When dealing with evidence about humans archaeologists and paleontologists may work together for example paleontologists might identify animal or plant fossils around an archaeological site to discover the people who lived there and what they ate or they might analyze the climate at the time of habitation 15 In addition paleontology often borrows techniques from other sciences including biology osteology ecology chemistry physics and mathematics 5 For example geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth 16 and analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and even to explain major transitions such as the Permian Triassic extinction event 17 A relatively recent discipline molecular phylogenetics compares the DNA and RNA of modern organisms to re construct the family trees of their evolutionary ancestors It has also been used to estimate the dates of important evolutionary developments although this approach is controversial because of doubts about the reliability of the molecular clock 18 Techniques from engineering have been used to analyse how the bodies of ancient organisms might have worked for example the running speed and bite strength of Tyrannosaurus 19 20 or the flight mechanics of Microraptor 21 It is relatively commonplace to study the internal details of fossils using X ray microtomography 22 23 Paleontology biology archaeology and paleoneurobiology combine to study endocranial casts endocasts of species related to humans to clarify the evolution of the human brain 24 Paleontology even contributes to astrobiology the investigation of possible life on other planets by developing models of how life may have arisen and by providing techniques for detecting evidence of life 25 Subdivisions edit As knowledge has increased paleontology has developed specialised subdivisions 26 Vertebrate paleontology concentrates on fossils from the earliest fish to the immediate ancestors of modern mammals Invertebrate paleontology deals with fossils such as molluscs arthropods annelid worms and echinoderms Paleobotany studies fossil plants algae and fungi Palynology the study of pollen and spores produced by land plants and protists straddles paleontology and botany as it deals with both living and fossil organisms Micropaleontology deals with microscopic fossil organisms of all kinds 27 nbsp Analyses using engineering techniques show that Tyrannosaurus had a devastating bite but raise doubts about its running ability Instead of focusing on individual organisms paleoecology examines the interactions between different ancient organisms such as their food chains and the two way interactions with their environments 28 For example the development of oxygenic photosynthesis by bacteria caused the oxygenation of the atmosphere and hugely increased the productivity and diversity of ecosystems 29 Together these led to the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells from which all multicellular organisms are built 30 Paleoclimatology although sometimes treated as part of paleoecology 27 focuses more on the history of Earth s climate and the mechanisms that have changed it 31 which have sometimes included evolutionary developments for example the rapid expansion of land plants in the Devonian period removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere reducing the greenhouse effect and thus helping to cause an ice age in the Carboniferous period 32 Biostratigraphy the use of fossils to work out the chronological order in which rocks were formed is useful to both paleontologists and geologists 33 Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms and is also linked to geology which explains how Earth s geography has changed over time 34 Sources of evidence editBody fossils edit Main article Fossil nbsp This Marrella specimen illustrates how clear and detailed the fossils from the Burgess Shale lagerstatte are Fossils of organisms bodies are usually the most informative type of evidence The most common types are wood bones and shells 35 Fossilisation is a rare event and most fossils are destroyed by erosion or metamorphism before they can be observed Hence the fossil record is very incomplete increasingly so further back in time Despite this it is often adequate to illustrate the broader patterns of life s history 36 There are also biases in the fossil record different environments are more favorable to the preservation of different types of organism or parts of organisms 37 Further only the parts of organisms that were already mineralised are usually preserved such as the shells of molluscs Since most animal species are soft bodied they decay before they can become fossilised As a result although there are 30 plus phyla of living animals two thirds have never been found as fossils 5 Occasionally unusual environments may preserve soft tissues 38 These lagerstatten allow paleontologists to examine the internal anatomy of animals that in other sediments are represented only by shells spines claws etc if they are preserved at all However even lagerstatten present an incomplete picture of life at the time The majority of organisms living at the time are probably not represented because lagerstatten are restricted to a narrow range of environments e g where soft bodied organisms can be preserved very quickly by events such as mudslides and the exceptional events that cause quick burial make it difficult to study the normal environments of the animals 39 The sparseness of the fossil record means that organisms are expected to exist long before and after they are found in the fossil record this is known as the Signor Lipps effect 40 Trace fossils edit nbsp Cambrian trace fossils including Rusophycus made by a trilobite nbsp Climactichnites Cambrian trackways 10 12 cm wide from large slug like animals on a Cambrian tidal flat in what is now WisconsinMain article Trace fossil Trace fossils consist mainly of tracks and burrows but also include coprolites fossil feces and marks left by feeding 35 41 Trace fossils are particularly significant because they represent a data source that is not limited to animals with easily fossilised hard parts and they reflect organisms behaviours Also many traces date from significantly earlier than the body fossils of animals that are thought to have been capable of making them 42 Whilst exact assignment of trace fossils to their makers is generally impossible traces may for example provide the earliest physical evidence of the appearance of moderately complex animals comparable to earthworms 41 Geochemical observations edit Main article Geochemistry Geochemical observations may help to deduce the global level of biological activity at a certain period or the affinity of certain fossils For example geochemical features of rocks may reveal when life first arose on Earth 16 and may provide evidence of the presence of eukaryotic cells the type from which all multicellular organisms are built 43 Analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to explain major transitions such as the Permian Triassic extinction event 17 Classifying ancient organisms editMain articles Biological classification Cladistics Phylogenetic nomenclature and Evolutionary taxonomy nbsp Levels in the Linnaean taxonomyNaming groups of organisms in a way that is clear and widely agreed is important as some disputes in paleontology have been based just on misunderstandings over names 44 Linnaean taxonomy is commonly used for classifying living organisms but runs into difficulties when dealing with newly discovered organisms that are significantly different from known ones For example it is hard to decide at what level to place a new higher level grouping e g genus or family or order this is important since the Linnaean rules for naming groups are tied to their levels and hence if a group is moved to a different level it must be renamed 45 Tetrapods AmphibiansAmniotes Synapsids Extinct Synapsids MammalsReptiles Extinct reptilesLizards and snakesArchosaurs ExtinctArchosaursCrocodiliansDinosaurs ExtinctDinosaurs BirdsSimple example cladogram Warm bloodedness evolved somewhere in thesynapsid mammal transition Warm bloodedness must also have evolved at one of these points an example of convergent evolution 5 Paleontologists generally use approaches based on cladistics a technique for working out the evolutionary family tree of a set of organisms 44 It works by the logic that if groups B and C have more similarities to each other than either has to group A then B and C are more closely related to each other than either is to A Characters that are compared may be anatomical such as the presence of a notochord or molecular by comparing sequences of DNA or proteins The result of a successful analysis is a hierarchy of clades groups that share a common ancestor Ideally the family tree has only two branches leading from each node junction but sometimes there is too little information to achieve this and paleontologists have to make do with junctions that have several branches The cladistic technique is sometimes fallible as some features such as wings or camera eyes evolved more than once convergently this must be taken into account in analyses 5 Evolutionary developmental biology commonly abbreviated to Evo Devo also helps paleontologists to produce family trees and understand fossils 46 For example the embryological development of some modern brachiopods suggests that brachiopods may be descendants of the halkieriids which became extinct in the Cambrian period 47 Estimating the dates of organisms editMain article Geochronology nbsp Cenozoic Mesozoic Paleozoic Proterozoic Quater nary Tertiary Creta ceous Jurassic Triassic Permian Missis sippian Pennsyl vanian Devo nian Silurian Ordo vician Camb rian Pecten gibbus Calyptraphorusvelatus Scaphiteshippocrepis Perisphinctestiziani Tropitessubbullatus Leptodusamericanus Cactocrinusmultibrachiatus Dictyoclostusamericanus Mucrospirifermucronatus Cystiphyllumniagarense Bathyurus extans Paradoxides pinus Neptunea tabulata Venericardiaplanicosta Inoceramuslabiatus Nerinea trinodosa Monotissubcircularis Parafusulinabosei Lophophyllidiumproliferum Prolecanites gurleyi Palmatolepusunicornis Hexamocaras hertzeri Tetragraptus fructicosus Billingsella corrugata nbsp Common index fossils used to date rocks in the northeast United States Paleontology seeks to map out how living things have changed through time A substantial hurdle to this aim is the difficulty of working out how old fossils are Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age and can be accurate to within 0 5 or better 48 Although radiometric dating requires very careful laboratory work its basic principle is simple the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known and so the ratio of the radioactive element to the element into which it decays shows how long ago the radioactive element was incorporated into the rock Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin and so the only fossil bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are a few volcanic ash layers 48 Consequently paleontologists must usually rely on stratigraphy to date fossils Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the layer cake that is the sedimentary record and has been compared to a jigsaw puzzle 49 Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers with each layer younger than the one underneath it If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known the fossil s age must lie between the two known ages 50 Because rock sequences are not continuous but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly next to one another However fossils of species that survived for a relatively short time can be used to link up isolated rocks this technique is called biostratigraphy For instance the conodont Eoplacognathus pseudoplanus has a short range in the Middle Ordovician period 51 If rocks of unknown age are found to have traces of E pseudoplanus they must have a mid Ordovician age Such index fossils must be distinctive be globally distributed and have a short time range to be useful However misleading results are produced if the index fossils turn out to have longer fossil ranges than first thought 52 Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy can in general provide only relative dating A was before B which is often sufficient for studying evolution However this is difficult for some time periods because of the problems involved in matching up rocks of the same age across different continents 52 Family tree relationships may also help to narrow down the date when lineages first appeared For instance if fossils of B or C date to X million years ago and the calculated family tree says A was an ancestor of B and C then A must have evolved more than X million years ago It is also possible to estimate how long ago two living clades diverged i e approximately how long ago their last common ancestor must have lived by assuming that DNA mutations accumulate at a constant rate These molecular clocks however are fallible and provide only a very approximate timing for example they are not sufficiently precise and reliable for estimating when the groups that feature in the Cambrian explosion first evolved 53 and estimates produced by different techniques may vary by a factor of two 18 History of life edit nbsp 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 54 Main article Evolutionary history of life Further information Timeline of evolutionary history of life Earth formed about 4 570 million years ago and after a collision that formed the Moon about 40 million years later may have cooled quickly enough to have oceans and an atmosphere about 4 440 million years ago 55 56 There is evidence on the Moon of a Late Heavy Bombardment by asteroids from 4 000 to 3 800 million years ago If as seems likely such a bombardment struck Earth at the same time the first atmosphere and oceans may have been stripped away 57 Paleontology traces the evolutionary history of life back to over 3 000 million years ago possibly as far as 3 800 million years ago 58 The oldest clear evidence of life on Earth dates to 3 000 million years ago although there have been reports often disputed of fossil bacteria from 3 400 million years ago and of geochemical evidence for the presence of life 3 800 million years ago 16 59 Some scientists have proposed that life on Earth was seeded from elsewhere 60 61 62 but most research concentrates on various explanations of how life could have arisen independently on Earth 63 For about 2 000 million years microbial mats multi layered colonies of different bacteria were the dominant life on Earth 64 The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis enabled them to play the major role in the oxygenation of the atmosphere 29 from about 2 400 million years ago This change in the atmosphere increased their effectiveness as nurseries of evolution 65 While eukaryotes cells with complex internal structures may have been present earlier their evolution speeded up when they acquired the ability to transform oxygen from a poison to a powerful source of metabolic energy This innovation may have come from primitive eukaryotes capturing oxygen powered bacteria as endosymbionts and transforming them into organelles called mitochondria 58 66 The earliest evidence of complex eukaryotes with organelles such as mitochondria dates from 1 850 million years ago 30 nbsp Opabinia sparked modern interest in the Cambrian explosion Multicellular life is composed only of eukaryotic cells and the earliest evidence for it is the Francevillian Group Fossils from 2 100 million years ago 67 although specialisation of cells for different functions first appears between 1 430 million years ago a possible fungus and 1 200 million years ago a probable red alga Sexual reproduction may be a prerequisite for specialisation of cells as an asexual multicellular organism might be at risk of being taken over by rogue cells that retain the ability to reproduce 68 69 The earliest known animals are cnidarians from about 580 million years ago but these are so modern looking that must be descendants of earlier animals 70 Early fossils of animals are rare because they had not developed mineralised easily fossilized hard parts until about 548 million years ago 71 The earliest modern looking bilaterian animals appear in the Early Cambrian along with several weird wonders that bear little obvious resemblance to any modern animals There is a long running debate about whether this Cambrian explosion was truly a very rapid period of evolutionary experimentation alternative views are that modern looking animals began evolving earlier but fossils of their precursors have not yet been found or that the weird wonders are evolutionary aunts and cousins of modern groups 72 Vertebrates remained a minor group until the first jawed fish appeared in the Late Ordovician 73 74 nbsp At about 13 centimetres 5 1 in the Early Cretaceous Yanoconodon was longer than the average mammal of the time 75 The spread of animals and plants from water to land required organisms to solve several problems including protection against drying out and supporting themselves against gravity 76 77 78 79 The earliest evidence of land plants and land invertebrates date back to about 476 million years ago and 490 million years ago respectively 78 80 Those invertebrates as indicated by their trace and body fossils were shown to be arthropods known as euthycarcinoids 81 The lineage that produced land vertebrates evolved later but very rapidly between 370 million years ago and 360 million years ago 82 recent discoveries have overturned earlier ideas about the history and driving forces behind their evolution 83 Land plants were so successful that their detritus caused an ecological crisis in the Late Devonian until the evolution of fungi that could digest dead wood 32 nbsp Birds are the only surviving dinosaurs 84 During the Permian period synapsids including the ancestors of mammals may have dominated land environments 85 but this ended with the Permian Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago which came very close to wiping out all complex life 86 The extinctions were apparently fairly sudden at least among vertebrates 87 During the slow recovery from this catastrophe a previously obscure group archosaurs became the most abundant and diverse terrestrial vertebrates One archosaur group the dinosaurs were the dominant land vertebrates for the rest of the Mesozoic 88 and birds evolved from one group of dinosaurs 84 During this time mammals ancestors survived only as small mainly nocturnal insectivores which may have accelerated the development of mammalian traits such as endothermy and hair 89 After the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago 90 killed off all the dinosaurs except the birds mammals increased rapidly in size and diversity and some took to the air and the sea 91 92 93 Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants appeared and rapidly diversified in the Early Cretaceous between 130 million years ago and 90 million years ago 94 Their rapid rise to dominance of terrestrial ecosystems is thought to have been propelled by coevolution with pollinating insects 95 Social insects appeared around the same time and although they account for only small parts of the insect family tree now form over 50 of the total mass of all insects 96 Humans evolved from a lineage of upright walking apes whose earliest fossils date from over 6 million years ago 97 Although early members of this lineage had chimp sized brains about 25 as big as modern humans there are signs of a steady increase in brain size after about 3 million years ago 98 There is a long running debate about whether modern humans are descendants of a single small population in Africa which then migrated all over the world less than 200 000 years ago and replaced previous hominine species or arose worldwide at the same time as a result of interbreeding 99 Mass extinctions edit nbsp Marine extinction intensity during the Phanerozoic Millions of years ago H K Pg Tr J P Tr Cap Late D O S nbsp Apparent extinction intensity i e the fraction of genera going extinct at any given time as reconstructed from the fossil record graph not meant to include recent epoch of Holocene extinction event Main article Mass extinction Life on earth has suffered occasional mass extinctions at least since 542 million years ago Despite their disastrous effects mass extinctions have sometimes accelerated the evolution of life on earth When dominance of an ecological niche passes from one group of organisms to another this is rarely because the new dominant group outcompetes the old but usually because an extinction event allows a new group which may possess an advantageous trait to outlive the old and move into its niche 100 101 102 The fossil record appears to show that the rate of extinction is slowing down with both the gaps between mass extinctions becoming longer and the average and background rates of extinction decreasing However it is not certain whether the actual rate of extinction has altered since both of these observations could be explained in several ways 103 The oceans may have become more hospitable to life over the last 500 million years and less vulnerable to mass extinctions dissolved oxygen became more widespread and penetrated to greater depths the development of life on land reduced the run off of nutrients and hence the risk of eutrophication and anoxic events marine ecosystems became more diversified so that food chains were less likely to be disrupted 104 105 Reasonably complete fossils are very rare most extinct organisms are represented only by partial fossils and complete fossils are rarest in the oldest rocks So paleontologists have mistakenly assigned parts of the same organism to different genera which were often defined solely to accommodate these finds the story of Anomalocaris is an example of this 106 The risk of this mistake is higher for older fossils because these are often unlike parts of any living organism Many superfluous genera are represented by fragments that are not found again and these superfluous genera are interpreted as becoming extinct very quickly 103 nbsp All genera Well defined genera Trend line Big Five mass extinctions Other mass extinctions Million years ago Thousands of genera nbsp Phanerozoic biodiversity as shown by the fossil record Biodiversity in the fossil record which is the number of distinct genera alive at any given time that is those whose first occurrence predates and whose last occurrence postdates that time 107 dd shows a different trend a fairly swift rise from 542 to 400 million years ago a slight decline from 400 to 200 million years ago in which the devastating Permian Triassic extinction event is an important factor and a swift rise from 200 million years ago to the present 107 History editMain article History of paleontology Further information Timeline of paleontology nbsp This illustration of an Indian elephant jaw and a mammoth jaw top is from Cuvier s 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants Although paleontology became established around 1800 earlier thinkers had noticed aspects of the fossil record The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes 570 480 BCE concluded from fossil sea shells that some areas of land were once under water 108 During the Middle Ages the Persian naturalist Ibn Sina known as Avicenna in Europe discussed fossils and proposed a theory of petrifying fluids on which Albert of Saxony elaborated in the 14th century 108 The Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo 1031 1095 proposed a theory of climate change based on the presence of petrified bamboo in regions that in his time were too dry for bamboo 109 In early modern Europe the systematic study of fossils emerged as an integral part of the changes in natural philosophy that occurred during the Age of Reason In the Italian Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci made various significant contributions to the field as well as depicted numerous fossils Leonardo s contributions are central to the history of paleontology because he established a line of continuity between the two main branches of paleontology ichnology and body fossil paleontology 110 111 112 He identified the following 110 The biogenic nature of ichnofossils i e ichnofossils were structures left by living organisms The utility of ichnofossils as paleoenvironmental tools certain ichnofossils show the marine origin of rock strata The importance of the neoichnological approach recent traces are a key to understanding ichnofossils The independence and complementary evidence of ichnofossils and body fossils ichnofossils are distinct from body fossils but can be integrated with body fossils to provide paleontological information nbsp Georges Cuvier s 1812 sketch of a skeletal and muscle reconstruction of Anoplotherium commune This sketch was amongst the first instances of prehistoric animal reconstructions based on fossil remains At the end of the 18th century Georges Cuvier s work established comparative anatomy as a scientific discipline and by proving that some fossil animals resembled no living ones demonstrated that animals could become extinct leading to the emergence of paleontology 113 The expanding knowledge of the fossil record also played an increasing role in the development of geology particularly stratigraphy 114 Cuvier proved that the different levels of deposits represented different time periods in the early 19th century The surface level deposits in the Americas contained later mammals like the megatheriid ground sloth Megatherium and the mammutid proboscidean Mammut later known informally as a mastodon which were some of the earliest named fossil mammal genera with official taxonomic authorities They today are known to date to the Neogene Quaternary In deeper level deposits in western Europe are early aged mammals such as the palaeothere perissodactyl Palaeotherium and the anoplotheriid artiodactyl Anoplotherium both of which were described earliest after the former two genera which today are known to date to the Paleogene period Cuvier figured out that even older than the two levels of deposits with extinct large mammals is one that contained an extinct crocodile like marine reptile which eventually came to be known as the mosasaurid Mosasaurus of the Cretaceous period 115 nbsp First mention of the word palaeontologie as coined in January 1822 by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in his Journal de physiqueThe first half of the 19th century saw geological and paleontological activity become increasingly well organised with the growth of geologic societies and museums 116 117 and an increasing number of professional geologists and fossil specialists Interest increased for reasons that were not purely scientific as geology and paleontology helped industrialists to find and exploit natural resources such as coal 108 This contributed to a rapid increase in knowledge about the history of life on Earth and to progress in the definition of the geologic time scale largely based on fossil evidence Although she was rarely recognised by the scientific community 118 Mary Anning was a significant contributor to the field of palaeontology during this period she uncovered multiple novel Mesozoic reptile fossils and deducted that what were then known as bezoar stones are in fact fossilised faeces 119 In 1822 Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville editor of Journal de Physique coined the word palaeontology to refer to the study of ancient living organisms through fossils 120 As knowledge of life s history continued to improve it became increasingly obvious that there had been some kind of successive order to the development of life This encouraged early evolutionary theories on the transmutation of species 121 After Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 much of the focus of paleontology shifted to understanding evolutionary paths including human evolution and evolutionary theory 121 nbsp Haikouichthys from about 518 million years ago in China may be the earliest known fish 122 The last half of the 19th century saw a tremendous expansion in paleontological activity especially in North America 123 The trend continued in the 20th century with additional regions of the Earth being opened to systematic fossil collection Fossils found in China near the end of the 20th century have been particularly important as they have provided new information about the earliest evolution of animals early fish dinosaurs and the evolution of birds 124 The last few decades of the 20th century saw a renewed interest in mass extinctions and their role in the evolution of life on Earth 125 There was also a renewed interest in the Cambrian explosion that apparently saw the development of the body plans of most animal phyla The discovery of fossils of the Ediacaran biota and developments in paleobiology extended knowledge about the history of life back far before the Cambrian 72 Increasing awareness of Gregor Mendel s pioneering work in genetics led first to the development of population genetics and then in the mid 20th century to the modern evolutionary synthesis which explains evolution as the outcome of events such as mutations and horizontal gene transfer which provide genetic variation with genetic drift and natural selection driving changes in this variation over time 125 Within the next few years the role and operation of DNA in genetic inheritance were discovered leading to what is now known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology 126 In the 1960s molecular phylogenetics the investigation of evolutionary family trees by techniques derived from biochemistry began to make an impact particularly when it was proposed that the human lineage had diverged from apes much more recently than was generally thought at the time 127 Although this early study compared proteins from apes and humans most molecular phylogenetics research is now based on comparisons of RNA and DNA 128 Paleontology in the vernacular press editBooks catered to the general public on paleontology include The Last Days of the Dinosaurs An Asteroid Extinction and the Beginning of our World 129 written by Riley Black The Rise and Reign of the Mammals A New History from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us 130 written by Steve Brusatte Otherlands A Journey Through Earth s Extinct Worlds 131 written by Thomas HallidaySee also editBiostratigraphy Stratigraphy which assigns ages of rock strata by using fossils European land mammal age Rock layers based on occurrences of fossil assemblages of European land mammals Fossil collecting Collecting fossils to study collect or sell List of fossil sites with link directory List of notable fossils List of paleontologists List of transitional fossils Paleoanthropology Study of ancient humans Paleobotany Study of organic evolution of plants based on fossils Paleogenetics study of the past through the examination of preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organismsPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback Paleontographer Paleophycology Study and identification of fossil algae Radiometric dating Technique used to date materials such as rocks or carbon Taxonomy of commonly fossilised invertebrates Classification of ancient commonly preserved spine lacking animalsPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology Ongoing series of zoology books Une Femme ou Deux French screwball comedy romance film starring Gerard Depardieu as a paleontologist Notes edit Outside the United States In 1822 Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville used the French term palœontologie 1 In 1838 Charles Lyell used the English term palaeontology in Elements of Geology 2 References edit a b Journal de physique de chimie d histoire naturelle et des arts Paris Cuchet 1822 p liv Lyell Charles 1838 Elements of geology London J Murray p 281 paleontology Online Etymology Dictionary Archived from the original on March 7 2013 Doolittle W Ford Worm Boris February 2000 Uprooting the tree of life PDF Scientific American 282 6 90 95 Bibcode 2000SciAm 282b 90D doi 10 1038 scientificamerican0200 90 PMID 10710791 Archived from the original PDF on July 15 2011 a b c d e Cowen R 2000 History of Life 3rd ed Blackwell Science pp xi 47 50 61 ISBN 0 632 04444 6 Laporte L F October 1988 What after All Is Paleontology PALAIOS 3 5 453 Bibcode 1988Palai 3 453L doi 10 2307 3514718 JSTOR 3514718 Laudan R 1992 What s so Special about the Past In Nitecki M H Nitecki D V eds History and Evolution SUNY Press p 58 ISBN 0 7914 1211 3 To structure my discussion of the historical sciences I shall borrow a way of analyzing them from the great Victorian philosopher of science William Whewell while his analysis of the historical sciences or as Whewell termed them the palaetiological sciences will doubtless need to be modified it provides a good starting point Among them he numbered geology paleontology cosmogony philology and what we would term archaeology and history a b c Cleland C E September 2002 Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical Science and Experimental Science Philosophy of Science 69 3 474 96 doi 10 1086 342453 S2CID 224835750 Archived from the original on October 3 2008 Retrieved September 17 2008 Laudan R 1992 What s so Special about the Past In Nitecki M H Nitecki D V eds History and Evolution SUNY Press p 58 ISBN 0 7914 1211 3 Whewell distinguished three tasks for such a historical science 1837 the Description of the facts and phenomena the general Theory of the causes of change appropriate to the case and the Application of the theory to the facts Perreault Charles 2019 The Search for Smoking Guns The Quality of the Archaeological Record Chicago University of Chicago Press p 5 ISBN 978 0226631011 Retrieved January 9 2020 Historical scientists successfully learn about the past by employing a smoking gun approach They start by formulating multiple mutually exclusive hypotheses and then search for a smoking gun that discriminates between these hypotheses Historical science vs experimental science National Center for Science Education October 25 2019 Retrieved January 9 2020 Philosophers of science draw a distinction between research directed towards identifying laws and research which seeks to determine how particular historical events occurred They do not claim however that the line between these sorts of science can be drawn neatly and certainly do not agree that historical claims are any less empirically verifiable than other sorts of claims we can separate their two enterprises by distinguishing means from ends The astronomer s problem is a historical one because the goal is to infer the properties of a particular object the astronomer uses laws only as a means Particle physics on the other hand is a nomothetic discipline because the goal is to infer general laws descriptions of particular objects are only relevant as a means paleontology science Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on August 24 2017 Retrieved August 24 2017 McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science amp Technology McGraw Hill 2002 p 58 ISBN 0 07 913665 6 Laudan R 1992 What s so Special about the Past In Nitecki M H Nitecki D V eds History and Evolution SUNY Press p 57 ISBN 0 7914 1211 3 How does paleontology differ from anthropology and archaeology University of California Museum of Paleontology Archived from the original on September 16 2008 Retrieved September 17 2008 a b c 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Immunological time scale for hominid evolution Science 158 3805 1200 03 Bibcode 1967Sci 158 1200S doi 10 1126 science 158 3805 1200 PMID 4964406 S2CID 7349579 Page R D M amp Holmes E C 1998 Molecular Evolution A Phylogenetic Approach Oxford Blackwell Science p 2 ISBN 0 86542 889 1 Black Riley 2022 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs An Asteroid Extinction and the Beginning of Our World 1st ed United States St Martin s Press ISBN 978 1250271044 Brusatte Steve 2022 The Rise and Reign of the Mammals A New History from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us 1st ed United States Mariner Books ISBN 978 0062951519 Halliday Thomas 2022 Otherlands A Journey Through Earth s Extinct Worlds 1st ed United States Random House ISBN 978 0593132883 External links editPaleontology at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Definitions from Wiktionary nbsp Media from Commons nbsp News from Wikinews nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource nbsp Textbooks from Wikibooks nbsp Resources from Wikiversity nbsp Travel information from Wikivoyage Smithsonian s Paleobiology website University of California Museum of Paleontology The Paleontological Society The Palaeontological Association The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology The Paleontology Portal Geology Paleontology amp Theories of the Earth a collection of more than 100 digitised landmark and early books on Earth sciences at the Linda Hall Library Portals nbsp Earth sciences nbsp Evolutionary biology nbsp Paleontology Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Paleontology amp oldid 1205954555, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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