PALAEONTOLOGY
- - Describe what palaeontologists do and
their area of study
WHAT IS PALEONTOLOGY?
• Scientific study of life that
existed in the ancient past
• Study of fossils and their
interactions with their
environments
• Enable us to understand the
evolutionary history of life
on Earth
WHAT IS PALEONTOLOGY?
• Incorporates
knowledge from
biology, geology, and
ecology
• Distinct from
archaeology
• Help us understand the
origin of many species,
including our own
HOW DO WE KNOW
HOW OLD THINGS ARE?
• Stratigraphy – study of
sedimentary layers to
estimate age ranges based
on layers of known ages
• Radiometric dating – using
radioactive elements to
work out how old things
are very accurately (within
0.05%)
ARCHAEOPTERYX
• Soon after Charles Darwin
published his ground breaking
paper on evolution. On the
Origin of Species, an incredibly
preserved fossil was found
• Seemed to be the perfect
“missing link” between
dinosaurs and birds
• Since then, more transitional
fossils have been found
LIFE EXPLORES
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFEYpFVF344