paleontology
noun
Jerry A. Coyne 
Did you know?
Until the 1820s, hardly anyone even suspected that dinosaurs had ever existed. In the years since, paleontology has sought to discover the entire history of life on earth, from the era of single-celled organisms up into the human era. Paleontologists continue to make remarkable discoveries, such as that a huge meteorite that fell in the Gulf of Mexico wiped out the dinosaurs—all except the birds, the only surviving dinosaurs. "Radiometric dating" can reveal the age (often tens of millions of years) of a rock or fossil or a tiny grain of pollen by measuring how much its radioactive elements have disintegrated. The study of molecules of DNA, RNA, and proteins has also become important for dating. Paleontologists often consult with geologists searching for oil, gas, and coal deposits, since all these "fossil fuels" were formed from plant and animal remains.
Example Sentences
Joanna Klein, National Geographic, 28 July 2020 But this is how paleontology works, with experts looking at different lines of evidence to test ideas. Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2022 Labs like those at the L.A. museum are where many of paleontology’s most exciting discoveries happen. Corinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times, 19 Aug. 2022 This change supports the hypothesis that eye-socket shape might be based on the power of an animal’s bite, says Randy Irmis, curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, who was not involved in this work. Fionna M. D. Samuels, Scientific American, 11 Aug. 2022 Ultimately, the joy of paleontology comes from a simple place for Dabelko. Palak Jayswal, The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 July 2022 Chris Mays is a lecturer in paleontology at University College Cork in Ireland. Chris Mays, Scientific American, 23 June 2022 Yet the science of paleontology has moved on; no longer is dinosaur hunting financed by industry barons desperate to one-up one another, and no longer are dinosaurs collected by frontiersmen on horseback. Steve Brusatte, The Atlantic, 7 June 2022 In popular depictions of paleontology, armored dinosaurs are often treated like icing on the Mesozoic cake. Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 May 2022 See More Word History
borrowed from French palaeontologie (later paléontologie), from palae- pale- + ont- (probably from Greek ónta "the things that exist, reality," noun derivative from neuter plural of ont-, ṓn, present participle of eînai "to be") + -o- -o- + -logie -logy — more at is
Note: The French noun was introduced by the zoologist Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777-1850), as a heading for a summary of work done on fossils in 1821 ("Analyse des principaux Travaux dans les Sciences physiques, publiés dans l'année 1821"), in Journal de physique, de chimie, d'histoire naturelle et des arts, tome 94 (janvier 1822), p. liv. Blainville had earlier (tome 90, 1820, p. 80) used palaeosomiologie in the same sense (for "l'étude des corps organisés fossiles," i.e., the study of fossil organisms), in an effort to find a word that included the remains of both plants and animals, but he seems to have judged this coinage inadequate and replaced it with palaeontologie. See Martin J. S. Rudwick, Worlds before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 48-49.
1833, in the meaning defined above