Paleontology

• Paleoecology

  • Study of the life and time of fossil organism, the lifestyle of individual animals and plants together with their relationships to each other and their surrounding environment
• Paleoautecology

  • The behavior of individual organisms and their relation to the environment
• Paleosynecology

  • The ecology of communities of organisms and their relationship to the environment
• Fidelity

  • Similarity of a death assemblage to its living counterpart
• Preservation Bias

  • The suit of processed that affect organismal remains can be compared between organisms of different species or between individuals of the same species
• Time-Averaging

  • Means that the individuals in an assemblage did not live together at the same time. Instead, years, decades, centuries, or even longer periods of time may have been passed between the times when the individuals were alive
• Habitat Mixing

  • Extent to which individuals from different habitats have been mixed together in a fossil assemblage
• Uniformitarianism

  • Commonly used assumption in the geological sciences based on the premise that processes and organisms in the Past functioned similarly to processes and organisms we observe today
• Paleocommunity

  • Recurring collection of associated species or a recurrent group of organisms related to some specific set of environmental conditions or limiting factors
• Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction

  • Attempt to describe past environments
• Proxy

  • Gives information about a factor, even if it does not directly measure something about that factor
• Ice Cores

  • Can provide a high-resolution record of the past climate but have a somewhat limited duration of applicability
• Sediments

  • Can provide information about the type of environment where the organisms lived, especially for marine ecosystems
• Sedimentary Feature

  • give additional clues about where and how the sediments were deposited
• Disarticulation

  • Describes the extent to which the skeletal components of an organism have remained intact as a fossil relative to how the components were oriented in the living organism
• Trade-off

  • If an organism is well suited for a particular condition, it usually comes ate the cost of something else
• Chemical Composition

  • The high-resolution record in coral skeletons also makes them ideal candidates for biogeochemical analysis
• Biogeochemistry

  • Study of the integrated biological, geological, and chemical processes and reactions that dictate the dynamics of natural environments
• Oxygen 18

  • Greater mass, when incorporated into a water molecules, it is less likely to evaporate (if all else is equal)
• Oxygen 16

  • More likely to evaporate and return to earth as freshwater precipitation. Thus, ocean water can be said to be “heavy” compared to freshwater
• Paleoclimates

  • Can be described on the basis of climatically-sensitive biotas and sediments together with stable isotopes
• Sexual Selection

  • A male organism finding a willing female; Mating
• Adaptation

  • An aspect of form that performs a physical or behavioral function
• Biological Species Concept

  • Concept that should be applied for modern plants and animals
• Morphological Species Concept

  • Concept that should be applied when judging the bound of a species entirely on form
• Gaps

  • Artificial divisions with evolving lineages
• Individual Variation

  • The normal differences between any pair of individuals of species that are not identical
• Geographic Variation

  • Physical Differences between populations or subspecies in different parts of the overall species range
• Sexual Dimorphism

  • Males and Females may show different sizes, and different specialized features (horns, antlers, tail feathers) often related to sexual selection
• Growth Stages

  • There may be quite different larval and adult stages, or where the body form alters during growth
• Ecophenotypic Effects

  • Local ecological conditions affect the form of an organism during its lifetime
• Allometry

  • The study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and finally behavior
• Allometric

  • “Different measure”
• Isometric

  • “Same measure”
• Positive Allometry

  • When the organ or feature of interest increases faster that the isometric expectation
• Negative Allometry

  • When growth of the structure of interest is slower than isometry
• Archaebacteria

  • A “branch” of the tree of life that includes all members of an ancient lineage of bacteria.
• Disparity

  • Sum of morphological variation
• Ontogeny

  • Developmental history of an organism within its own lifetime
• Phylogeny

  • Evolutionary history of species