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, 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 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 all the way 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 Plateosaurus.

Plateosaurus is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Europe. Plateosaurus is a basal (early) sauropodomorph dinosaur, a so-called "prosauropod". As of 2011, two species are recognized: the type species P. engelhardti and the slightly earlier P. gracilis.

Discovered in 1834 by Johann Friedrich Engelhardt and described three years later by Hermann von Meyer, Plateosaurus was the fifth named dinosaur genus that is still considered valid. It is now among the dinosaurs best known to science: over 100 skeletons have been found, some of them nearly complete.

Plateosaurus was a bipedal herbivore with a small skull on a long, mobile neck, sharp but plump plant-crushing teeth, powerful hind limbs, short but muscular arms and grasping hands with large claws on three fingers, possibly used for defence and feeding. Unusually for a dinosaur, Plateosaurus showed strong developmental plasticity: instead of having a fairly uniform adult size, fully grown individuals were between 4.8 and 10 metres (16 and 33 ft) long and weighed between 600 and 4,000 kilograms (1,300 and 8,800 lb). Commonly, the animals lived for at least 12 to 20 years, but the maximum life span is not known. (see more...)

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Did you know?

... that biological anthropologist David Tab Rasmussen enjoyed working in the Neotropics because it allowed him to study both primates and birds, his two favorite subjects?
...that naturalist Remington Kellogg used his time serving in France during World War I to collect specimens for universities in the United States?
... that the extinct buthid scorpion Uintascorpio was first placed in the family Vaejovidae?
...that Cetartiodactyla is a hypothesis based on DNA that suggests whales and hippos are related?
... that the fossil maple species Acer kenaicum was suggested to be an ancestor of silver maples?

...that Archiinocellia is noted to be the only snakefly fossil genus from British Columbia and one of only two from Canada?
... that the extinct wasps Dryinus grimaldii and Dryinus rasnitsyni are distinguishable by the modified claws on their front legs?
... that the cat gap is a period in the fossil record (cat illustration pictured) of approximately 25 to 17 million years ago in which there were few cats or cat-like species?
... that the extinct horsetail Equisetum thermale grew in Jurassic hot springs?
... that Lepidotus was a genus of prehistoric fish that existed from the Late Triassic (Rhaetic) to the middle Cretaceous (Cenomanian)?

More did you know facts

General images - load new batch

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

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

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Selected article on paleontology in human science, culture and economics

On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent research findings. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique and unlike animals.

The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the "eclipse of Darwinism" from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, and it has now become the unifying concept of the life sciences. (see more...)

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On this day...

May 16:

1891 - Wilfrid Chapman was born in London, England.
1899 - Frederick McCoy died in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Modified Laminar Bone in Ampelosaurus atacis and Other Titanosaurs (Sauropoda): Implications for Life History and Physiology

Nicole Klein, P. Martin Sander, Koen Stein, Jean Le Loeuff, Jose L. Carballido, Eric Buffetaut

published 16 May 2012

Theropod Fauna from Southern Australia Indicates High Polar Diversity and Climate-Driven Dinosaur Provinciality

Roger B. J. Benson, Thomas H. Rich, Patricia Vickers-Rich, Mike Hall

published 16 May 2012

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Selected image

A molar of the proboscidean Platybelodon grangeri. This fossil dates between 5.3 and 14 million years ago to the Miocene epoch of the Neogene period. It was discovered in the Linxia Basin of Gansu Province, China and measures 20 × 9 × 6 cm in size.
Photo credit: Didier Descouens