Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to the start of the Holocene epoch. It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term has been used since 1822 formed from Greek παλαιός, ὄν, and λόγος.
Sciaenidae is a family of ray-finned fishes belonging to the order Acanthuriformes. They are commonly called drums or croakers in reference to the repetitive throbbing or drumming sounds they make. The family consists of about 293 to 298 species in about 66 or 67 genera.
Clupeiformes is the order of ray-finned fish that includes the herring family, Clupeidae, and the anchovy family, Engraulidae. The group includes many of the most important forage and food fish.
Mephitidae is a family of mammals comprising the skunks and stink badgers. They are noted for the great development of their anal scent glands, which they use to deter predators. Skunks were formerly classified as a subfamily of the Mustelidae ; however, in the 1990s, genetic evidence caused skunks to be treated as a separate family. Similarly, the stink badgers had been classified with badgers, but genetic evidence shows they share a more recent common ancestor with skunks, so they are now included in the skunk family. A 2017 study using retroposon markers indicated that they are most closely related to the Ailuridae and Procyonidae.
Nautilus are the ancient pelagic marine mollusc species of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. This is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and the suborder Nautilina.
The pacarana is a rare and slow-moving hystricognath rodent indigenous to South America. Native Tupi people call it the pacarana because it is superficially similar to the paca, a different rodent which is not in the same family. The pacarana has a chunky body and is large for a rodent, weighing up to 15 kg (33 lb) and measuring up to 79 cm in length, not including the thick, furry tail.
Archosauria or archosaurs is a clade of diapsid sauropsid tetrapods, with birds and crocodilians being the only extant representatives. Although broadly classified as reptiles, which traditionally exclude birds, the cladistic sense of the term includes all living and extinct relatives of birds and crocodilians such as non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, phytosaurs, aetosaurs and rauisuchians as well as many Mesozoic marine reptiles. Modern paleontologists define Archosauria as a crown group that includes the most recent common ancestor of living birds and crocodilians, and all of its descendants.
Orthocerida, also known as the Michelinocerida, is an order of extinct orthoceratoid cephalopods that lived from the Early Ordovician possibly to the Late Triassic. A fossil found in the Caucasus suggests they may even have survived until the Early Cretaceous, and the Eocene fossil Antarcticeras is sometimes considered a descendant of the orthocerids although this is disputed. They were most common however from the Ordovician to the Devonian.
The Fusulinida is an extinct order within the Foraminifera in which the tests are traditionally considered to have been composed of microgranular calcite. Like all forams, they were single-celled organisms. In advanced forms the test wall was differentiated into two or more layers. Loeblich and Tappan, 1988, gives a range from the Lower Silurian to the Upper Permian, with the fusulinid foraminifera going extinct with the Permian–Triassic extinction event. While the latter is true, a more supported projected timespan is from the Mid-Carboniferous period.
Libonectes is an extinct genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaur order. It is known from specimens found in the Britton Formation of Texas (USA) and the Akrabou Formation of Morocco, which have been dated to the lower Turonian stage of the late Cretaceous period.
Acanthohoplites is an extinct genus of ammonites in the family Parahoplitidae that lived in the Aptian and Early Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous.
Cranocephalites is a Middle Jurassic ammonitid genus named by Spath in 1932 and included in the family Cranoceratidae, superfamily Stephanoceratacea.
Oxycerites is an extinct ammonoid cephalopod belonging to the haploceratoid family, Oppeliidae, that lived during the Middle Jurassic.
Proleptolepis is an extinct genus of ray-finned fish belonging to the family Leptolepidae.
Macrocephalites is a genus of the stephanoceratoid ammonite family Macrocephalitidae, diagnostic of the Callovian stage of the Middle Jurassic. Three subgenera, Dolikephalites, Kamptokephalites, and Pleurocephalites are recognized in addition to Macrocephalites itself, with Indocephalites tentatively included as the fourth.
Haploceras is a genus of late Upper Jurassic ammonoid cephalopods and the type for the Haploceratidae, similar to Lissoceras but with a broader whorl section and small blunt lappets and a blunt rostrum; some species with feeble ventral folds on body chamber.
Creniceras is a rather small Upper Jurassic ammonite with a shell in the range of about 1.6 cm in diameter,(about 1/2 in). The shell of Creniceras is eccentrically coiled, compressed, and generally smooth, except for a median row of cockscomb serrations on the body chamber and the possibility of blunt ribbing on the sides.
Etayoa is an ungulate of the family Carodniidae in the order Xenungulata that lived during the Early Eocene in northern South America.
Orbitolina is an extinct genus of foraminifera belonging to the order Textulariida and family Orbitolinidae. Fossils of this genus are widely found in beds deposited in the Tethys Ocean ranging from Aptian ) to Cenomanian in age. It has been used as a shallow carbonate platform facies marker and as a Cretaceous index fossil.
Pternoconius is an extinct genus of macraucheniid litoptern from the Late Oligocene and Early Miocene of Argentina. Fossils of this genus have been found in the Sarmiento Formation of Argentina.
