INTRODUCTION to

PALEONTOLOGY
Dr Mrs Etornam Fiadonu
2024/2025
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Introduction

What is palaeontology?

From Greek: Palaeo ) old, ancient ( and

ontology )Study of existence).

•It is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the

study of fossils to determine:
• organisms' evolution
• their interactions with each other
• Their environments (paleoecology).
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What is palaeontology?

Palaeontology: is the study of ancient life through its

fossil remains or the traces of its activity as recorded
by ancient sediments.

By studying the fossils in older rocks, the

paleontologist attempts to establish an account of
how all the animals and plants, which make up the
modern biosphere evolved from their earliest
beginnings.

Umat
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Palaeontology: divided into:

• Micropaleontology: is the branch of palaeontology that
studies microfossils.

• Palaeobotany: The study of fossil plants.

• Palaeoecology: the study of fossil communities environment.

• Palynology: the study of pollen and spores

 Fossil

What is a fossil?

A fossil is an impression, cast, original

material or track of any animal or plant that
is preserved in rock after the original organic
material is transformed or removed.
 :A fossil may be
• an original skeleton
or shell;
• a mold or cast;
• material that has
replaced the once
living thing;
• traces such as
footprints or worm
tubes
:A fossil may be
:A fossil may be
:A fossil may be
:A fossil may be
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IMPORTANCE OF FOSSILS

Fossils provide some information about when it lived,

development of plants and animals. Primitive and
relatively simple progress into complex and more
advanced forms.

Environmental (climatic) indicators. reef-building corals

appear to have always lived under much the same
conditions as they live today. were deposited in warm,
fairly shallow salt water.
 IMPORTANCE OF FOSSILS

A study of the occurrence and distribution of

such marine fossils makes it possible to outline
the location and extent of pre-historic seas.
purposes of correlation

Microfossils are especially valuable as index

fossils for the petroleum geologist. Key micro
fossils are Foraminifera, Ostracods, Spores and
pollens.

Fossils don’t provide much information about the

development of plants throughout geologic time.
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Types of fossil
• There are two types of fossil:

• Body fossils: the actual remains of organisms.

• Trace fossils or Ichnofossils: Markings in the sediment

made by the activities of organisms. Are indirect signs of
life;

• Tracks, trackway dinosaur footprints,

• worm burrows,
 TYPES OF TRACE FOSSILS
Trails the tail or belly of an animal drags the ground.
trilobite grazing trails,

Burrows excavations of an animal made into soft sediment.

Bioturbation of the sediment will destroy primary
sedimentary structures.

Borings are holes made by an animal into shells, rock, wood

or hard sediment. Sponges also produce borings.

other evidences of life processes, such as fossil excrement

(examples:coprolites, stomach dung) and

Gastroliths (highly polished stone used by reptiles, birds and

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Track

Trail

Track
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Boring
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Types of fossil
•

Gastrolith
Coprolite
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What are the conditions that are favorable for
fossil preservation?

1. The possession of hard parts vastly increases an

animals’ chance of being successfully fossilized.

2. Rapid burial and/or lack of oxygen encourages good

preservation.

3. Presence of glacier

4. Severe dry conditions/environments

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• Fine grained sediments are also good for preserving

fossils, on account of their low oxygen content.

• Organisms living in water, especially seawater, always

have the best preservation potential.

• Animals and plants living on land stand the poorest

chance of preservation.
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?Of what materials are "hard parts" composed

• Invertebrate animals may have durable external skeletons

such as shell

• And even soft-bodied invertebrates such as worms may

have some resistant components (jaw).

• Common, preservable skeleton substances include:

• Silica (SiO2) silicon dioxide; highly resistant material

which forms the skeletal elements (spicules) of certain
sponges.
 Example of Spicules

• Spicules
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?Of what materials are "hard parts" composed

Calcite (CaCO3), calcium carbonate; calcite is stable crystal

form.

Aragonite CaCO3; less stable out of seawater than calcite, it

is very common shell material.

After burial, aragonite may change to calcite or be dissolved

out and replaced by another mineral.

Many Molluscs have aragonitic shells

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– phosphate: Hard parts bones , teeth of vertebrates,

conodonts, outer covering of trilobites, shiny scales of
fossil fish are phosphatic.

– Organic hard parts, resistant materials such as chitin,

cellulose, keratin. Arthropods: insects, have chitinous
skeletons, Plant hard parts are composed of cellulose
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• Chitin: is a polysaccharide-a complex, insoluble organic

substance made of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and
oxygen atoms joined in chains to form long molecules.

• It is commonly preserved. Insects exoskeletons are made

of chitin.

• The trilobites possessed chitinous carapaces which were

further strengthened by impregnation with mineral
substances.
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• Scleroprotein: another group of complex substances,

insoluble in water, which form tough covering of certain
animals.

Substances such as Keratin and Collagen fall into this

group.

They are fibrous proteins and they formed the skeletons

of the graptolites.

Molluscas also make use of fibrous protein; Conchiolin.

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Can a complete organism become fossilized?

• YES.
1. By Natural refrigeration under glacial conditions.

In Siberia and Alaska has preserved the carcases of

Mammoth (large hairy kind of elephant) and
Rhinoceros

2. Amber is fossilized tree resin, and since it is very

sticky when it first emerges, insects are often
captured upon its surface and later entombed.
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3. Peat bogs, decay are seriously inhibited in peat

bogs, and animals may be beautifully preserved.

4. In areas where natural petroleum seeps to the

surface, tar pools or asphalt lakes may form, they
are dangerous traps for animals of all kinds.

5. In very hot, dry regions, the corpses (body) of

animals may be dried so quickly as to prevent decay.
The skeleton is preserved "mummification".
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What are the main changes during
fossilization "diagenesis"?
Mode of fossils preservation

• Recrystallization: molluscan groups; gastropods and

cephalopods, have aragonitic shells.
• Aragonite is unstable out of seawater.
• No sedimentary rock older than Mesozoic will contain
aragonite.
• Aragonite may invert to the stable polymorph of
calcium carbonate; Calcite.
• In such cases, the original microstructure of the shell
may be preserved in the new mineral.
• More commonly, the aragonite will dissolve to leave a
void.
 Mode of Fossil Preservation

• Replacement: the void left by the dissolution of an

aragonite is called mold. This mold may be infilled at a
later date by the precipitation of another mineral
(Cast). This may be calcite, but it could also be silica.
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• Replacement by another minerals such as iron minerals:

• pyrite=Iron sulphide; (FeS2),

• siderite (iron carbonate= FeCO3),
• limonite (iron oxide= FeO), and
• hematite (iron oxide =Fe2O3) is commonly seen .

• Only Pyrites forms well-preserved fossils, and these

must be protected from oxidation once they have been
removed from the rock.
 Mode of Fossil Preservation

Carbonization: Is the process where only the residual

carbon of the organism remains. In nature this usually
happens over time when the organism is subjected to heat
and pressure.

Fossil plants are typical example, only a thin carbon layer

is left on a piece of shale.
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?What are molds and casts

The sediment, which bears the imprint of the shell’s outer

.surface is referred as the external mold

The sediment which filled the body cavity and bears the
imprints of the internal features, is referred to as the
,internal mold
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If percolating solutions should precipitate some mineral

within the void, then the resulting replica of the fossil is
called cast.
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• Permineralisation: this is the partial

replacement or impregnation of original
material by mineral salts.

• Bone and wood are highly porous and

so is susceptible to this form of
petrifaction.

• Carbonization – tissue material is

decomposed or reduced to a film of carbon
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How do fossils "date" rocks?

• Stratigraphy: is the study of how layered rocks and

their contained fossils are distributed in space and
time.

• But, beds of rock are very frequently found to have

been disturbed by folds and faults; and over large
distances, any particular bed may change in thickness
and composition.
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• Thus it may not be possible to match beds of the same

age in distance places, and even if we could, the fact that
the rocks have the same composition is no guarantee that
they were formed at the same time. Fossils provide us
with an answer to this problem.
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What is Index Fossil?
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• Since life is forever changing through time, with species

continuously arising and becoming extinct, it is possible to
identify strata by means of their enclosed fossils, since
these fossils may not occur in bed either older or younger.

• In practice, strata are actually zoned by the first

appearance of the zone fossil, an event which extends like
a "time contour" through rocks of that age everywhere.
Zone Fossil?
 What is Index Fossil?

Is fossil that is useful for dating and

.correlating the strata in which it is found
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Index fossils

1.Worldwide distribution, occurring in all sediments

irrespective of depositional environment.

• In the sea, free-living swimmers or floaters will live

independent of bottom conditions, and should
therefore be good zone fossils if preserved such as
"pollen & spores".

2. Species should be short-lived, i.e. the forms should

display rapid evolution. This is necessary for the
correlation to be a fine one, indicating precise
equivalence rather than broad ones.
 Criteria for Index Fossil

 It must be easily preserved and identified

 It must be numerically abundant.
 It must be widely distributed geographically.
 It must be restricted in range - duration of time
must be restricted to certain pages of earth
history.
 It must have quick evolutionary changes
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In the lower Paleozoic , the graptolites provide perhaps the
best example of zonal macrofossils.
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Mesozoic the ammonites provide a time stratigraphy which is almost
unrivalled.
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• The first appearance of a particular species defines the
base of a zone, which is that thickness of rock between the
appearance of one zone fossil and the arrival of the next.

• The time during which the zone fossil held its way is
known as a chron.
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Fossils occurring in situ

Organisms which are fossilized in the place where they

lived and died are said to occur in situ. Fossils which
have been moved from their habitat to another area for
burial are said to be transported.

The erosion of a fossiliferous rock may release fossils into

streams, and may deposit in younger sediments, so could
be a source of confusion when a stratigrapher tries to
date the younger sediments. This is not common, but
fossils recycled in this way are called derived fossils.
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Fossils as indicators of environments

• Certain animals are known to have very definite
environmental requirements and therefore very selective
about where they live.

• Modern corals, only survive above 90 meters depth in the

open ocean, and they only thrive and building reefs above
about 40 meters.

• The water must not drop below ~ 20ºc, and they can
tolerate neither cloudy water nor any deviation below
normal salinity.
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• By the principle of uniformity, wherever we find fossil
reefs composed of modern (Scleractinian; dated from the
Mesozoic) corals, we can say that conditions like these
also prevailed in the ancient.
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• Recently, it has been discovered that the ratio of the two

oxygen isotopes O16 and O18 found in the shells of marine
invertebrates reflects the temperature of the water in which
they live,

• warmer conditions encourage the increase of the heavier O18.

Corals growth a little every day. The daily growth bands are
grouped into monthly bands; they found that the Devonian
year is 399 days (13 months of 30.6 day in the month).
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What is Taxonomy?

• Over a million species of animals alone have already been

described.

• Generic classification; it is based upon origin and

common ancestry.

• The fundamental unit of biological classification is the

species.

• All members of a species share a range of features not

shared by any other group.
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• Inherent in this unity of appearance and shape is the
notion that all members of a species may interbreed
successfully to produce viable offspring in the natural
state.

• Sometimes in captivity animals of different but closely

related species may interbreed and produce offspring
which, to some extent, share the properties of their
parents and which may also have distinct
characteristics of their own; the horse and donkey will
produce the mule, these animals are called hybrids.
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• Similar species may be grouped together in larger

categories whose member species more closely resemble
each other (i.e. have more things in common) than species
of another group. The larger group is called the genus (pl.
genera).

• The scientific name of any animal composed of two words

called a binomen.
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• The first name, which is always written with a capital
letter, denotes the genus and is called the generic name.

• The species or specific name comes after, and has no

capital letter. In printed books, such names are always
written in italics.

• When you write them yourself, or have your manuscript

typed, they must be underlined.

Example:
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• The names themselves are chosen to be descriptive, they
may also be dedicatory. Descriptive names are taken
from Latin or Greek, and even when a species is named
after somebody, the name must be Latinized.
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Example
• Canis familiaris: The domestic dog.
• Canis = dog .
• Familiaris = belonging or relating to a family or
household .

• Homo sapiens The human being

• Homo = a man (L).
• Sapiens = sensible, judicious, wise (L).
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• This system of naming has been with use since it was set
out by the Swedish botanist
• CARL VON LINNÉ (1707 – 1778),
• more commonly known by Latinized name Linnaeus, in
his book Systema Nature (The system of Nature) in 1758.
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 Similar genera are grouped into families, families into
orders, orders into classes and classes into the greatest
division of all, the phylum

 (the names of these groups are slightly different in

botany, but the principle of classification is the same).

 Genera>families>orders>classes>Phylum
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• There are over twenty phyla (Pl. of phylum) in the

kingdom Animalia, some containing millions of
species, some only a few.

• Kingdom Animalia
• Kingdom planta
• Kingdom Monera one cell, contain cytoplasma and
nucleus.
• Kingdom Fung
• Kingdom Protista uni-cell, motile
 Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
class: Mammalia
order: Primata
family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: sapiens
our scientific names is just Homo sapiens.

Com - Atlantic bluefin tuna, Sc - Thunnus thynnus

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Perciformes
Family: Scombridae
Tribe: Thunnini
Genus: Thunnus
Species: T. thynnus
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• Kingdom Ainmalia: all animals
• Subkingdom Metazoa: all animals containing of more than one
cell
• Phylum Chordata: possessing an axial, dorsal nerve cord

• Subphylum Vertebrata nerve cord surrounded by a bony

spine

• Class Mammalia true hair, nursing of young, brain of

advanced type
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• Order Primates mostly tree-dwelling placental

mammals

• Suborder Anthropoidea monkeys, apes (tailless

monkeys , and man

• Family Hominidae man and his

immediate ancestors

• Genus Homo man

• Species sapiens sensible, judicious,

wise
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Numerical taxonomy

French botanist called MICHEL ADANSON (1727 – 1806).

• Using an appropriate program, a computer can analyze

similarity over the whole range of attributes, plotting its
results in a way, which displays this resemblance
graphically in a dendrogram (family tree) form.