Paleontology,
palaeontology or
palæontology (from Greek:
παλαιό (palaeo), "old, ancient";
όν (on), "being"; and
logos, "speech, thought") is the study of
prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of
fossils.
[1] This includes the study of
body fossils, tracks (
ichnites),
burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised
faeces (
coprolites),
palynomorphs and chemical residues.
Modern paleontology sets ancient life in its context by studying how long-term physical changes of global geography paleogeography and climate paleoclimate have affected the evolution of life, how ecosystems have responded to these changes and have adapted the planetary environment in turn and how these mutual responses have affected today's patterns of biodiversity. Hence, paleontology overlaps with geology (the study of rocks and rock formations) as well as with botany, biology, zoology and ecology – fields concerned with life forms and how they interact.
The major subdivisions of paleontology include paleozoology (animals), paleobotany (plants) and micropaleontology (microfossils). Paleozoologists may specialise in invertebrate paleontology, which deals with animals without backbones or in vertebrate paleontology, dealing with fossils of animals with backbones, including fossil hominids (paleoanthropology). Micropaleontologists study microscopic fossils, including organic-walled microfossils whose study is called palynology.
There are many developing specialties such as paleobiology, paleoecology, ichnology (the study of tracks and burrows) and taphonomy (the study of what happens to organisms after they expire). Major areas of study include the correlation of rock strata with their geologic ages and the study of evolution of lifeforms.
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Compsognathus (meaning 'elegant jaw') was a small,
bipedal,
carnivorous theropod dinosaur. The animal was the size of a chicken and lived around 150
million years ago, during the early
Tithonian stage of the late
Jurassic Period, in what is now
Europe. Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in
Germany in the 1850s and the second in
France more than a century later.
Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Teeth discovered in
Portugal may be further fossil remains of the genus.
Although not recognized as such at the time of its discovery, Compsognathus is the first dinosaur known from a reasonably complete skeleton. Today, C. longipes is the only recognized species, although the larger specimen discovered in France in the 1970s was once thought to belong to a separate species, C. corallestris. Until the 1980s and 1990s, Compsognathus was the smallest known dinosaur and the closest supposed relative of the early bird Archaeopteryx. Thus, the genus is one of the few dinosaur genera to be well known outside of paleontological circles. (see more...)
