Paleontology

Background

Paleontology is the scientific study of the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth using the fossil record. Fossils are the physical remains or traces of ancient organisms preserved in the rock record, and the fossil record is the totality of fossils and the information they provide. For much of its history, paleontology was viewed as a descriptive science (Schweitzer, 2023), but it has evolved into a hypothesis-driven field utilizing complex data and methods (Smith et al., 2025).

While rooted at the intersection of geology and biology, modern paleontology is a highly integrative, multi-disciplinary field. The scope of paleontological research is vast, and common themes include the origin of life, extinction, anatomy, evolutionary relationships, and biodiversity changes throughout time. Paleontological research is important for understanding the timing and nature of evolutionary and ecological processes, climate change in the past and present, and the current biodiversity crisis.

References

Schweitzer, M. H. (2023). Paleontology in the 21st Century. Biology (Basel), 12(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/biology12030487

Smith, J. A., Dowding, E. M., Abdelhady, A. A., Abondio, P., Araújo, R., Aze, T., Balisi, M. A., Buatois, L. A., Carvajal-Chitty, H., Chattopadhyay, D., Coiro, M., Dietl, G. P., González Arango, C., Kevrekidis, C., Kimmig, J., Mychajliw, A. M., Pimiento, C., Regalado Fernández, O. R., Schroeder, K. M.,…Kiessling, W. (2025). Identifying the Big Questions in paleontology: a community-driven project. Paleobiology, 51(3), 408-431. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2025.10042