CHAPTER XV 

 PALEONTOLOGY 



Many of the fundamental problems which exist in connection with 

 living organisms may also be studied, and in some degree solved, with 

 reference to beings, now extinct, which lived on the earth in times past. 

 This biology of ancient life is termed paleontology. Paleontology may 

 be defined as the science of fossil organisms. When concerned with 

 animals only, it is sometimes called paleozoology as distinguished from 

 paleobotany. Anything having to do with animals not now living, and 

 of which we have no knowledge except that derived from their remains, 

 is part of paleontology. The paleontologist may study structure and 

 classification only, or he may be interested in distribution, or in modes of 

 life and relation to environment, or in the evolution of past animals. Thus 

 for nearly every feature of the zoology of modern animals there is a cor- 

 responding branch of paleontology. Many facts concerning organisms of 

 the past can only be inferred, and there is no way in which experiment 

 may be applied to extinct forms; but in some other respects the paleon- 

 tologist has sources of information far superior to any possessed by the 

 student of modern life. 



Nature of Fossils. — A fossil is, literally, something dug up. As ordi- 

 narily used, the term includes any trace of prehistoric life. Fossils are 

 usually petrifactions of parts of the animals or plants themselves, but 

 may be any other signs of the existence of such life. The term usually 

 implies that the parts or traces of organisms have been buried, though 

 this feature should probably not be insisted upon. In rare instances 

 animals have been preserved in the flesh, almost as successfully as if 

 immersed in spirits in a museum. Large mammals have been removed 

 from peat bogs in various parts of the world, still in a good state of pres- 

 ervation. Mammoths (elephant-like animals) have been buried in 

 frozen soil in Siberia and elsewhere for thousands of years, and then re- 

 covered practically intact (Fig. 211). Oil-bearing soils in central Europe 

 have yielded a rhinoceros and a mammoth with some of the flesh still 

 in place. Small animals, such as insects and even lizards have been 

 found entire in deposits of amber. This substance is of resinous nature 

 and of uncertain origin, being perhaps derived from pine trees. At first 

 liquid, it flowed over and embedded the small bodies without injury to 

 them, and then hardened. Some of the most beautiful of fossil insects 

 are of this kind. 



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