What can the science described above give us and how can it be applied in other areas? The fact is that this discipline, unlike others, cannot boast of spectacular research methods and results that radically affect our lives, such as physics, engineering, or medicine. However, based on the knowledge gathered bit by bit, scientists are learning a lot about the history of our world before the advent of man and filling in the intermediate branches of the theory of evolution. For example, using radiocarbon analysis of remains, we can find out what the climate was like millions of years ago, where birds or other animals came from, and make predictions about how they will change in a few hundred thousand years.
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.