The largest branches of paleontology are paleozoology and paleobotany. A special place belongs to paleoecology. These sections, in turn, are divided into quite large subsections. A separate section of paleontology is taphonomy, the science of the burial of organic remains and the formation of their locations.

Nowadays, paleontology is developing rapidly. It plays a significant role in revealing the patterns of development of the organic world, in establishing the ideas of evolution and in shaping the materialistic worldview in natural science.

For a long time, the hypothesis of the self-origination of life on Earth, i.e., its emergence from chemicals shortly after the formation of the atmosphere, prevailed. Sometimes these processes were considered simultaneous. It was believed that at that time our planet had conditions favorable for the formation of amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids, “protocells” and, ultimately, living cells, from which a huge variety of organisms were formed in the course of evolution. Recently, the hypothesis that life, already at the cellular level, or even in the form of spores and bacteria, was brought to Earth from outer space has been gaining more and more support. It is possible that it, as well as water, the basis of all life forms on our planet, was brought with it by giant ice meteorites that bombarded the Earth and the Moon at the end of the Archean era.

Of all the diversity of organisms that lived in the past, only a very small fraction is preserved in the fossil record, and not all of it is accessible to researchers. Only the paleontological documents recovered from the depths of the earth reveal the chronicle of the Earth. The variety of paleontological documents is enormous. For the most part, these are fossilized (i.e., fossilized), or mummified, or buried in ice or amber remains of plants and animals, their prints in rocks, shells and mollusc cores, etc. Paleontological documents also include traces of their vital activity – endoglyphs and exoglyphs. The former are traces of plant roots, animal tracks, etc. preserved inside rocks; the latter are paw prints, crawling or falling marks, coprolites, gnawing on bones or wood, and so on. Modern research methods make it possible to extract from fossils and study the structure of chemophosphates – molecules of alkanes, fatty acids, amino acids, and even DNA that were once part of living things.
Paleontological data must be taken into account when addressing environmental issues, which have become particularly relevant in recent years. They allow us to reveal the reasons for the flourishing of some forms and the extinction of others, as well as to recreate the habitats of endangered or extinct species; to assess the possibilities and consequences of acclimatization and reacclimatization of certain species.

It is worth noting that paleontological documents are sometimes mistakenly considered to be various formations of inorganic origin or even artifacts.

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In practice, what paleontology studies is like a fascinating but very complex game, where it is easy to make mistakes or take wishful thinking, because researchers have much less material at their disposal than they would like.

Excavations

But if the fragments of living organisms are so old, why didn’t they rot in their time? How have they been preserved after millions of years, and what is the reason for their rarity?

As already mentioned, paleontology is the science of ancient life forms, and they have come down to us in the form of fossils. And the thing is that for their formation, appropriate conditions are needed. Most often, they are found in sandstone, and for good reason. Fossilization is a special process of mineralization of biological material, when under pressure, in the absence of sufficient air and moisture, the bones or cells of the “victim” are gradually saturated with mineral compounds. And eventually, they turn into stone.

This process is very long, and it is often disrupted by some kind of physical intervention, so fewer fossilized remains have survived to this day than could have. In addition, they need to be found first, and they are not always in the form of a perfect whole skeleton. Sometimes paleontologists spend several months just to collect them correctly.

The most promising areas are canyons, gorges, and ancient sandstone deposits, when, for example, an earthquake causes a collapse and animals remain under a multi-meter layer of rock.

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Most often, when people think of the first forms of life on Earth, dinosaurs come to mind. But the idea that they are the oldest inhabitants of our world, since as much as 65 million years have passed since their disappearance, is a mistake. According to some scientists, life on the planet originated 3.9 billion years ago, and this figure is very difficult to realize.

In those periods, the Earth was inhabited mainly by the first bacteria and microorganisms, and much later the first invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles appeared.

Even in ancient Greece, scientists found fossilized remains of various life forms, but, of course, they could not find out anything about their age and origin, and therefore did not study them purposefully. But in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, interest in the ancient inhabitants of our world flared up with renewed vigor. And in the early nineteenth century, the term “paleontology” was coined.

Our time

So, according to the official definition, paleontology is the study of ancient life forms that existed in past geological periods and have been preserved to this day in the form of fossilized remains and their fragments. It is also worth noting that this science recreates the intermediate stages of biological species based on the theory of biological evolution.

The study of fossilized bones, analysis of traces and other facts of the existence of organisms – all this is within the scope of interest of such a science as paleontology. What can this research give us? Apart from theoretical knowledge and ideas about the course of evolution, not much. But the fact is that the basic humanities do not aim to pursue any material benefit at all.

Probably the most famous part of the objects of study of such a science, thanks to which everyone has heard about it at least once, is the study of dinosaurs of all kinds and epochs. But in practice, everything is more prosaic – their fossils are rare and far from complete, so even in museums you can see only reconstructions of skeletons, where only a small part of the real bones are present.

When answering the question of what paleontology studies, it is worth mentioning the inhabitants of the ancient oceans – various trilobites and others. Their remains are quite well preserved in rocky sediments and sandstone layers. And the youngest representatives of the historical fauna are mammoths.

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