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The simplest definition of "paleontology" is "the study of ancient life". [7] 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".
Even when fossils that are found in paleosols are understood, much more can be learned regarding their preservation, ecology, and evolution by studying the paleosols they inhabited. Fossil stumps in a paleosol. A fossilized footprint, burrow, or coprolite (fossil feces), are examples of trace fossils (ichnofossils). These trace fossils do not ...
Tree remains that have undergone petrifaction, as seen in Petrified Forest National Park. In geology, petrifaction or petrification (from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) ' rock, stone ') is the process by which organic material becomes a fossil through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals.
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the ...
A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and history of Earth.Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the field and the laboratory.
Others were of the opinion, also following ancient authors, that fossils naturally grew in the rocks. Steensen's contemporary Athanasius Kircher, for example, attributed fossils to a "lapidifying virtue diffused through the whole body of the geocosm", considered an inherent characteristic of the earth – an Aristotelian approach.
Hydrology is the study of the hydrosphere and the movement of water on Earth. It emphasizes the study of how humans use and interact with freshwater supplies. Study of water's movement is closely related to geomorphology and other branches of Earth science. Applied hydrology involves engineering to maintain aquatic environments and distribute ...
Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence (such as petrified skeletal remains, bone fragments, footprints) and cultural ...