Tag Archives: Palaeontology

Palaeontology for dummies, Part 1

“I’m a palaeontologist.”

“Oh cool, I love Time Team/Indiana Jones/history*.” / “You’re not dashing enough to do what Indiana Jones does.” / “Nice, National Treasure was awesome and I love Nicolas Cage.” / “You’re like Lara Croft?”

http://www.palaeontologyonline.com/articles/2013/life-palaeontologist-palaeontology-dummies-part-1/

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Laura

Biology Letters Special Feature – Models in Palaeontology

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/models_in_palaeontology.xhtml

Models in Palaeontology

Biology Letters Special Feature 2012
Organized by Dr Paul Barrett and Dr Andrew Smith FRS

Abstract:

The history of life on this planet is gleaned from analyzing how fossils are
distributed through time and space. While these patterns are now rather
securely known, at least for well-studied parts of the world, their
interpretation remains far from simple. Fossils preserve only partial data
from which to reconstruct their biology, and the geological record is
incomplete and biased, so that taxonomic ranges and palaeocommunity
structure are imperfectly known. To better understand the often highly
complex deep-time processes that gave rise to the empirical fossil record,
palaeontologists have turned to modelling the past. This Special Feature
entitled Models in Palaeontology brings together a series of 11 papers that
showcase how modelling the past is being applied to advance our
understanding across a wide spectrum of current palaeontological endeavours.

Enjoy! 🙂

–Mikko