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Classic paleoecology uses data from fossils and subfossils to reconstruct the ecosystems of the past. It involves the study of fossil organisms and their associated remains (such as shells, teeth, pollen, and seeds), which can help in the interpretation of their life cycle, living interactions, natural environment, communities, and manner of death and burial.
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 ...
Duria 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)
The deepest fossil, a fragment of leg bone, could be as old as 86,000 years—that sure changes the arrival time of humans in Southeast Asia. "This really is the decisive paper for the Tam Pá ...
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 ...
Palaeozoology, also spelled as Paleozoology (Greek: παλαιόν, palaeon "old" and ζῷον, zoon "animal"), is the branch of paleontology, paleobiology, or zoology dealing with the recovery and identification of multicellular animal remains from geological (or even archeological) contexts, and the use of these fossils in the reconstruction of prehistoric environments and ancient ecosystems.
Archaea (prokaryotic microbes) were first found in extreme environments, such as hydrothermal vents. The 3.48 Ga Dresser formation hosts microfossils of prokaryotic filaments in silica veins, the earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth, [70] but their origins may be volcanic.
Fossil sites with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues—are known as Lagerstätten—German for "storage places". These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus slowing decomposition.