What do paleontologists do?!?

Question

What do paleontologists do?!?

Answer 1

Paleontology, palaeontology or palæontology (from Greek: παλαιό (palaeo), "old, ancient"; όν (on), "being"; and logos, "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of fossils.[1] This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised faeces (coprolites), palynomorphs and chemical residues. Studies of prehistoric hominins, their culture and their behaviour are the purview of two other disciplines, archaeology and paleoanthropology.

[edit] Background

Modern paleontology sets ancient life in its context by studying how long-term physical changes of global geography paleogeography and climate paleoclimate have affected the evolution of life, how ecosystems have responded to these changes and have adapted the planetary environment in turn and how these mutual responses have affected today's patterns of biodiversity. Hence, paleontology overlaps with geology (the study of rocks and rock formations) as well as with botany, biology, zoology and ecology – fields concerned with life forms and how they interact.

The major subdivisions of paleontology include paleozoology (animals), paleobotany (plants) and micropaleontology (microfossils). Paleozoologists may specialise in invertebrate paleontology, which deals with animals without backbones or in vertebrate paleontology, dealing with fossils of animals with backbones, including fossil hominids (paleoanthropology). Micropaleontologists study microscopic fossils, including organic-walled microfossils whose study is called palynology.

There are many developing specialties such as paleobiology, paleoecology, ichnology (the study of tracks and burrows) and taphonomy (the study of what happens to organisms after they expire). Major areas of study include the correlation of rock strata with their geologic ages and the study of evolution of lifeforms.

Paleontology utilises the same classic binomial nomenclature scheme, devised for the biology of living things by the mid-18th century Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus and increasingly sets these species in a genealogical framework, showing their degrees of interrelatedness using the still somewhat controversial technique of 'cladistics'.

The primary economic importance of paleontology lies in the use of fossils to determine the age and nature of the rocks that contain them or the layers above or below. This information is vital to the mining industry and especially the petroleum industry. Simply looking at the fossils contained in a rock remains one of the fastest and most accurate means of telling how old that rock is.

Fossils were known by primitive humans and were sometimes identified correctly as the remains of ancient lifeforms. The organised study of paleontology dates from the late 18th century. For a more complete historical overview see the article History of paleontology.

Answer 2

study fossils i think.

EDIT: they study prehistorical life on earth through examining fossils.

Answer 3

They try to figure out how the environment of the earth was in the past by looking at what was living at different places at different times, and how changes in the environments changed the things that lived there, among many other things.  Some paleontologists just study how different life forms changed-evolved over time, others worry more about how the earth changed and evolved over time, using the life that was there as evidence.

How do they do this?  They go out in the field and look at real rocks, find fossils and examine them, find which life forms are found together and which aren't, spend a lot of the time in the lab looking at sediments and fossils, and spend a lot of time putting the data together and trying to see trends and relationships in the data.  Actual field work for most is a few weeks to a couple of months per year at most, the rest of the time is in the lab or at the computer.