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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 ...
Stupendemys appears in the fossil record as the largest freshwater turtle, first modern elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, rhinoceros and gazelles appear in the fossil record 3.6 Ma Blue whales grow to modern size. 3 Ma Earliest swordfish. 2.7 Ma Paranthropus evolves. 2.5 Ma Earliest species of Arctodus and Smilodon evolve. 2 Ma
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
The era began with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the most severe extinction event in the fossil record; 95% of the species on Earth died out. [149] It ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs .
1901 — Petroleum geologist W.W. Orcutt recovers first fossils from the La Brea Tar Pits in Southern California, a rich source of ice age mammal remains. 1905 — Dippy the diplodocus is exhibited in London's Natural History Museum; its multiple casts and high profile make the word dinosaur a household name
Fossils attributed to H. sapiens, along with stone tools, dated to approximately 300,000 years ago, found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco [51] yield the earliest fossil evidence for anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Modern human presence in East Africa , at 276 kya. [52]
The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 300–200,000 years ago such as the Herto and Omo remains of Ethiopia, Jebel Irhoud remains of Morocco, and Florisbad remains of South Africa; later fossils from the Skhul Cave in Israel and Southern Europe begin around 90,000 years ago
Fossils of organisms' bodies are usually the most informative type of evidence. The most common types are wood, bones, and shells. [59] 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.