In this article we will talk about such a science as paleontology - what it studies, why it is needed and what is the use of it for the modern world.
Ancient times
Most often, when mentioning the first forms of life on Earth, dinosaurs come to mind. But the opinion that they are the most ancient inhabitants of our world, since the moment of their disappearance has passed as much as 65 million years, is wrong. According to some estimates of scientists, life on the planet originated 3.9 billion years ago, and this figure is very difficult to recognize.
In those periods, the Earth was mainly inhabited by the first bacteria and microorganisms, and much later the first invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles appeared.
Even in ancient Greece, scientists found petrified remains of various life forms, but, of course, they could not find out anything about their age and origin, and therefore they did not deliberately study them. But already in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, interest in the ancient inhabitants of our world flared up with renewed vigor. And at the beginning of the XIX century, the term "paleontology" was proposed. What is she studying and why?
Nowadays
So, according to the official definition, paleontology is engaged in the study of ancient life forms that existed in past geological periods and have survived to this day in the form of fossilized remains and their fragments. It is also worth noting that this science reproduces the intermediate links of biological species based on the theory of biological evolution.
The study of fossilized bones, the analysis of traces and other facts of the existence of organisms - all this is within the scope of interests of such a science as paleontology. What research can give us? In addition to theoretical knowledge and ideas about the course of evolution, a little. But the fact is that the basic humanities do not set themselves the goal of pursuing any material gain.
Probably the most famous part of the objects of study of such a science, thanks to which everyone at least once but heard about it, is the study of dinosaurs of all kinds and eras. But in practice it’s all more prosaic - their fossils are rare and far from complete, so even in museums you can see only reconstructions of skeletons, where there are only a small part of real bones.
In answering the question of what paleontology studies, it is worth mentioning the inhabitants of the ancient oceans - various trilobites and others. Their remains are preserved quite well in rocky sediments and strata of sandstone. Well, the “youngest” representatives of the historical fauna are mammoths. Thanks to the permafrost conditions in Siberia, their remains are distinguished by remarkable preservation and details.
What is useful paleontology
What can the described science give us and how to apply it in other areas? The fact is that this discipline, unlike others, cannot boast of spectacular research methods and results that fundamentally affect our lives, such as physics, engineering or medicine. But based on knowledge gathered bit by bit, scientists will learn a lot about the history of our world before the advent of man and make up for the intermediate branches of the theory of evolution. For example, using radiocarbon analysis of the remains, you can find out what climate was millions of years ago, from whom birds or other animals came from, and make predictions about how they will change in a few hundred thousand years.
What paleontology studies in practice looks like a fascinating, but very difficult game, where it is easy to make mistakes or wishful thinking, because researchers have much less material at their disposal than we would like.
Excavations
But if the fragments of living organisms are so many years old, then why didn’t they rot in their times? How are millions of years later preserved, 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 education, appropriate conditions are needed. Most often they are found in sandstone, and this is no accident. Petrification is a special process of mineralization of biological material, when under the influence of pressure, in the absence of sufficient air and moisture, the bones or cells of the “victim” are gradually impregnated with mineral compounds. And in the end, turn into stone.
This process is very long, and often it is violated by some kind of physical intervention, therefore less fossil remains have survived to this day than they could. In addition, they must first be found, and they are not always in the form of an ideal whole skeleton. Sometimes paleontologists spend several months just collecting them correctly.
The most promising areas are canyons, gorges, ancient sandstone deposits, when, for example, a collapse occurs due to an earthquake, and the animals remain under a multimeter layer of rock.
Branches
In paleontology, there are several main branches - these are paleozoology and paleobotany. The first studies vertebrates and invertebrates, and the second - ancient plants and everything connected with them. And they, in turn, are divided into many sections, of which paleoanthropology, which deals with the study of the ancestors of people, cannot be ignored. So paleontology is the science of once existing living organisms as a whole.