PALAEONTOLOGY

Dr. Babu N
Palaeontology: (Gr., Palae= ancient,
onto = life and logos =
study)
 a science dealing with the life of past
geological periods as known from fossil
remains.

• Biology: Study of organisms through time.

– Neontology: study of existing life
– Palaeontology: anicient pre-historic life.

• Palaeontology: coined in 1825 by Ducrotay

de Blanville
• Introduced in 1834 by Fischer Von
Waldheim into geological literature
 History
• Xenophanes (576-486 B.C): found marine
shells on hill slopes of Paros and
imagined area was under sea (Ancient
times)
• Ibn Sina (Persian naturalist): proposed a
theory of pertifying fluids after found fossils it
was in The Book of Healing (1027)-Middle
Ages.
• Shen Kuo (Chinese naturalist):
proposed a theory of climate changes
based on the evidence from petrified
bamboo.
 Branches of Palaeontology
• Biostratigraphy: correlating and assigning relative ages
• Ichnology: traces of organis
• Invertebrate palaeontology
• Micro Palaeontology
• Palaeoxlology
• Palaeobiology
• Palaeobotany
• Paleogenetics
• Paleopedology
• Paleotempestology
• Paleozoology
• Palynology
• Sclerochronology
• Taphonomy
• Vertebrate Paleontology
• Paleo Climatology
• Bio Geography
• Palaeo ecology
 b. How things fossilize
1. Death
2. Decay - usually rapid, especially in presence of oxygen.
Retarded by aridity and low temperatures
3. Bioerosion - boring, rasping, fungal infestation. Highest in
shallow, highly productive areas with low rates of
sedimentation. Informative about these palaeoceanographic
parameters
(4. Preservation on or under microbial mats)
5. Transport - almost ubiquitous. By physical or biological
agents. But, mostly transport within habitat - studies suggest
death assemblages have high spatial fidelity with local living
fauna.
6. Time averaging - controlled by sedimentation rate and shell
destruction rate.
7. Burial - and post-depositional chemical and physical effects.
FOSSILS
• Derived from the Latin word “Fossilium”
• Anything dug out of the earth.
• Recognizable remains of once-living plants
or animals (extinct for many thousands of
years).
• Preserved in sediments, rocks and other
materials such as ice, tar, amber etc. prior
to historic times.
Definition:
• The remnants of plants or animals
of the past geologic ages
preserved in the rocks of the
earth’s crust by natural
processes are known as “fossils”
KEY CONCEPT
Specific environmental conditions are necessary in
order for fossils to form.
 NATURE AND MODE OF PRESERVATION
What is preserved and how it is preserved.
• Comprise the remains of the complete
animal but that is very rare.
• Fossils chiefly include insects preserved in
amber, animal sin asphalt, and mammoths
and other mammals frozen in ice.
• Rare occurrence and are of recent origin
• Petrified remains of hard parts of body in
rocks. Often incomplete and broken
fragments.
• May be just the impressions of
footprints or leaf prints and not the
original part of the organism.
• Fossils might be also in the form of
casts or mould.
• Amber-preserved fossils are organisms that become
trapped in tree resin that hardens after the tree is buried.
• Preserved remains form when an entire organism becomes
encased in material such as ice.
Fossils can form in several ways.
• Permineralization occurs when minerals carried by water
are deposited around a hard structure.
 Conditions favorable for preservation

• Two factors are favorable for the preservation of

organisms as fossils

• A. the possession of hard parts

such as shells and bones, and
• B. quick burials of the remains by
different processes to prevent
destruction by scavengers and decay.
 FOSSILIZATION
• May occur in several ways.
–Soft parts remain unaltered in
fossilization;
–Only hard parts remain unaltered
and
–Hard parts are also altered.
 1. Unaltered-soft parts (Actual
remains)
• Whole organism, including its soft parts is
preserved as such.
• Possible due to entombment of the
animals under a thick cover of ice.
• Insects become entangled in soft and
sticky secretions of trees.
• On exposure, changes to amber and
perfectly preserved with entrapped.
2. Unaltered hard parts
• Shells and internal skeletons are
frequently preserved for long periods of
time.
• Fossils of marine animals that fell into
the soft sediment on the sea-floor when
they died.
• Land dwellers, such as Corals, mollusca
and protozonas are most likely to be
preserved.
3. Altered hard parts
• The actual remains of an organism are likely to
undergo changes through time.
• Changes are promote by the slowly circulating
GW that carry elements in solution.

a) Petrification
b) Carbonisation
c) Moulds and casts
d) Impressions
a) Petrification:
• slow process which involves removal in
solution, of each individual molecule of the
material constituting the hard parts and

• simultaneous precipitation of an equivalent

quantity of the replacing mineral.

• Molecule by molecule replacement of one

substance by another helps in preserving even the
most delicate organic structures, as such.
• By this way bones, shells or plant tissues are
transformed into calcite, silica or pyrite and the
processes are known as calcification, silicification and
pyritization respectivley.
b)Carbonisation

• During decomposition, organism

loses nitrogen, oxygen and other
volatile constituents.
• Resulting, enriched in carbon and
said to have been corbonised.
• Coal seams are the carbonised
remains of plants.
c)Moulds and casts
• Hard parts preserved within the
accumulating sediments , may be totally
removed in solution.
• As a result, hollows are left within the rock
beds which are called moulds.

• When the moulds are filled up

subsequently with mineral matter, it is
known as “cast”,
• Casts only retain the external form of the
hard parts.
d)Impression
• Plants and animals devoid of hard
parts.
• Do sometimes leave a record of
their existence, in the form of
imprints within the rock beds.
• Impression of leaves, feathers of
extinct birds are the examples.
4. Tracks and Trails
Moving on soft and damp ground, foot print
or trials of animals are entombed in the
mud
When ground hardens into a rock the foot
prints present are preserved.
Even though they do not form any part of the
animal, yet they are regarded as fossils.
 Uses of fossils
1. Provides evidences in favour of organic
evolution and migration of plants and animals
through ages.
2. Establishing the geological age of rock beds
and their correct order of succession in any area.
3. Reconstruction of palaeogeography of earth,
fossils are vital significance.
– Presence of fossil trees or stumps – terrestrial
environment
– Fossils of corals and echinoderms, etc. –
marine environment
4. Also help in ascertaining the palaeoclimate.
5. correlating rock-beds of one area with another.
6.The remnants of ancient life used to establish the
time sequence of sedimentary rocks.
7. Provide evidences of “Ontogeny recapitulates
phyllogeny” (Development of the individual brings
the race history)
– the fossils include the ancestors of modern
forms.
8. Any investigation leading to the discovery of new
deposits of coal and petroleum.
9. Many groups which are altogether extinct and
which often reveals the relationships of existing
animals and plants.
• A natural cast forms when flowing water removes all of the
original tissue, leaving an impression.
• Trace fossils record the activity of an organism.
• Specific conditions are needed for fossilization.
• Only a tiny percentage of living things became fossils.
Radiometric dating provides an accurate way to estimate
the age of fossils.
• Relative dating estimates the time during which an
organism lived.
– It compares the placement
of fossils in layers of rock.
– Scientists infer the order in
which species existed.
• Radiometric dating uses decay of unstable isotopes.
– Isotopes are atoms of an element that differ in their
number of neutrons.

neutrons protrons
• Radiometric dating uses decay of unstable isotopes.
– Isotopes are atoms of an element that differ in their
number of neutrons.
– A half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of the
isotope to decay.
KEY CONCEPT
The geologic time scale divides Earth’s history based
on major past events.
Index fossils are another tool to determine the age of rock
layers.
• Index fossils can provide the relative age of a rock layer.
– existed only during specific spans of time
– occurred in large geographic areas
• Index fossils include fusulinids and trilobites.
The geologic time scale organizes Earth’s history.
• The history of Earth is
100
represented in the geologic time 250
scale. 550

1000

2000
PRECAMBRIAN TIME
This time span makes up the
vast majority of Earth’s history.
It includes the oldest known
rocks and fossils, the origin of
eukaryotes, and the oldest
animal fossils.

Cyanobacteria
• Eras last tens to hundreds of millions of years.
– consist of two or more periods
– three eras: Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic
• Periods last tens of millions of years.
– most commonly used units of time on time scale
– associated with rock systems.
• Epochs last several million
years.
Fossils – Conti…..
Fossils are the remains of living things.
They can be the remains of plants.

Fossil leaf

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Or they can be the remains of animals. Animal fossils
are usually shells or bones. The shells or bones are
usually quite heavy, as they have been “turned into
stone”. They are also usually a different color from when
they were alive.

Fossil shell Fossil alligator

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?
But do fossils have to be the actual remains of a living
thing? The picture below shows the footprints of a
snipe-like shore bird that lived among the dinosaurs
about 100 million years ago. No bones of this bird are
known to exist.

Do you think this is a

fossil? Why or why not?

Bird footprints
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?
 Fossil dinosaur footprint

Yes, the footprints are fossils. Fossils aren’t just the

remains of living things. Fossils can be something that a
living thing made.

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Footprints are not parts of a
living thing. But they were
made by living things.
Because they were made
by living things, they are
evidence that a living thing
was there.

Fossil dinosaur tracks

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

So, fossils are more than just the remains of living
things. Fossils are the remains or evidence of living
things.

This picture shows an

Egyptian mummy.
Is the mummy the remains of
a living thing?

Do you think the mummy is a

fossil? Why or why not? Egyptian mummy

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

 No, an Egyptian mummy is not a fossil.

How was the mummy formed? Priests

took the dead person’s body and cut out
the internal organs, dried out the rest of
the body with a chemical called natron,
rubbed oils on the body and wrapped it in
linen.
In other words, the mummy was made by
man. That’s why the mummy isn’t a
fossil. Fossils have to form naturally,
Egyptian without any help from man.
mummy
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?
The Egyptian mummy isn’t a fossil for
another reason. It’s not old enough.
Fossils are prehistoric. Prehistoric means
that it comes from a time before people
could record their history. But
Egyptians wrote about their lives using
hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphic
writing

Because the mummy comes from a time when people

were recording their history, the mummy is not
prehistoric, so it isn’t a fossil. People started writing
and recording their history about four to five thousand
years ago.
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?
 What about the bones
of a cave man? Cave
men drew pictures of
animals on the walls
of their caves.
Would the bones of a
cave man be a fossil?

Cave man skull

 Cave paintings
Yes, the bones of a cave man would be a fossil. While
the pictures cave men made show animals that lived at the
time, the pictures don’t record the history of the cave men.
Because people started writing their history about four to
five thousand years ago, for something to be a fossil it
has to be older than that.
So, as fossil detectives, we now know exactly what kind
of clues we’re looking for as we search for missing pages
of the fossil diary.

Fossils are the natural

remains or evidence of living
things from prehistoric times.

Trilobite
But sometimes it’s hard to tell if something is really the
prehistoric remains or evidence of a living thing.
Look at the picture. What do you think it shows?
 While it may look like a fossil
plant, this is a picture of a type of
mineral deposit called a
dendrite.
The mineral manganese was
dissolved in water. The water
Dendrite seeped into the rock.

Later the water dried up, leaving the

manganese behind.
The pattern looks like a tree or fern, but it’s
not.
Dendrites can be confusing. The best
way to identify a dendrite is by how flat it
is. Dendrites are usually as flat as a
drawing on a piece of paper.
Fossils are usually not flat. You can
see the rounded shape of the plant
fossils on the right.

Plant fossil

Another clue is that dendrites follow the cracks in

stones, sometimes turning as much as ninety degrees.
That’s because they were formed by flowing water which
seeps along cracks.
Look at the picture to the left.
Is it a fossil, the prehistoric
remains or evidence of a living
thing?
 While it may look like a human leg, this
is a picture of a stone. The stone just
happens to be shaped like a human leg.
Because it’s not from a living thing it’s
not a fossil.

One way to keep from being fooled by an unusually

shaped stone is to remember that animal fossils usually
show only the hard parts of a body, like the shell or
bones. But in some very rare cases, that’s not always
true.

54
This picture shows a 40 million year
old gnat. The entire body of the gnat
has been preserved in a clear stone
called amber.

Gnat preserved in amber

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Thumbs up if you think it’s a fossil.

Thumbs down if you think it’s not.

56
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Ant preserved in amber

57
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

1,600 year old human body preserved in a

peat bog. Tell students the high acidity of the
peat kept the body from decaying.
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Fossil dinosaur nest.

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Dendrite mineral deposit.

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Coprolite – fossilized feces

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Fossilized dinosaur skin.

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Fossil human footprints; 200,000 years old.

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Fossil worm burrow

Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Preserved ripple marks from the

bottom of an ancient stream.
Is It a Fossil? Yes or No?

Preserved mud cracks

END