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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".
Fabio Colonna in Dissertatio de glossopetris (1616) had burnt these fossils to show that they were made of lime, organic matter, rather than minerals. [5] The book included 29 drawings of fossils drawn from specimens by him and engraved using copper-plate by Pietro Santi Bartoli. The book was rediscovered by William Wotton of the Royal Society ...
Palaeontology: the classification and taxonomy of fossils within the geological record and the construction of a palaeontological history of the Earth. Pedology: the study of soil, soil formation, and regolith formation. Petroleum geology: the study of sedimentary basins applied to the search for hydrocarbons (oil exploration).
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 ...
Ultimately, his repeated identification of fossils as belonging to species unknown to man, combined with mineralogical evidence from his stratigraphical studies in Paris, drove Cuvier to the proposition that the abrupt changes the Earth underwent over a long period of time caused some species to go extinct.
Paleobotany includes the study of terrestrial plant fossils, as well as the study of prehistoric marine photoautotrophs, such as photosynthetic algae, seaweeds or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant spores and pollen.
Niels Steensen (Danish: Niels Steensen; Latinized to Nicolas Steno [b] or Nicolaus Stenonius; [c] [8] 1 January 1638 – 25 November 1686 [9] [10] [NS: 11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686] [9]) was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years.
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.