Palaeontology Sibelle MAKSOUD © Dany Azar Introduction • - Fossils very common in certain kind of rocks beautiful objects found high in the mountains? How are fossils formed?? Sedimentary layers (strata) in which the fossil is trapped are formed in an aquatic environment (basin, lagoon, lake…) Introduction How a perfectly preserved fish lay within rocks? Cenomanian – Nammoura, Lebanon Introduction Palaeontology: the science that studies the fossils, their formation, their succession over geological ages, and the information they can give on historical biodiversity, evolution, paleoclimates and paleoenvironments. Daohugou Museum, China Palaeontology Paleontology, palaeontology or palæontology (from Greek: paleo, "ancient"; ontos, "being"; and logos, "knowledge") Daohugou Museum, China Palaeontology This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites) Dinosaur footprints - Spain Palaeontology Fossilised faeces (coprolites) Palaeontology Palynomorphs and chemical residues. Lower Devonian palynomorphs - Portugal. Palaeontology Studies of prehistoric • Hominins, their culture and their behaviour Fossils • Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up"): - The mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) - Of animals, plants, and other organisms. Chaoyang Geopark Fossil record The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations and sedimentary layers (strata). Phylogeny The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, and the evolutionary relationships between taxa. Taphonomy From the Greek “taphos” meaning “burial”, and “nomos” meaning “law”: The study of all that has happened to organisms from the moment of death to final preservation as a fossil. Taphonomy Individual Paleoecological analysis Historical palaeontology Prehistoric man used fossils as ornaments and amulets without however understanding their meaning. For him they were artifacts of nature or a kind of curiosity. Lebanon Historical palaeontology a) Li Shizhen (scientific naturalist) b) Extract of Li Shizhen book in 1590 Historical palaeontology - Herodotus 450 BC: The area had once been beneath the sea Historical palaeontology - Platoon (~428 - ~348 BC): ﺃﻓﻼﻁﻭﻥ Each individual of a species is an imperfect copy of a perfect immutable model belonging to the world of ideas. Historical palaeontology Aristotle (~384 - ~322 BC) fixist: ﺃﺭﺳﻁﻭ Living things could arise spontaneously from rocks or mud, or from "seeds of life" therein, and that fossils were the incomplete examples or failures of this process. Historical palaeontology Leonardo DE VINCI (1452-1519): Puts in doubt the superstitions on fossils "The stratified stones of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers. . . In every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the divisions of strata in the rocks.” Historical palaeontology John RAY (1628-1705) considered that fossils were living organisms Robert HOOKE (1635-1703) - The first who used microscope to study fossils. - He considered that fossils help to the comprehension of the history of the Earth. Historical palaeontology Carl von LINNEUS (1707-1778) Swedish naturalist: He created the binomial classification (Homo sapiens Linneus, 1758) and wrote the Systema Naturae.
