Timeline of paleontology

Last updated July 19, 2024

Antiquity – 16th century

6th century B.C. — The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon argues that fossils of marine organisms show that dry land was once under water.^[1]
4th century B.C. — Aristotle posits that the stoniness of fossils is caused by vaporous exhalations.^[2]
1027 — The Persian naturalist Avicenna elaborates on Aristotle's speculations in The Book of Healing by proposing that fossils are caused by petrifying fluids (succus lapidificatus).^[2]
1031-1095 — The Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo uses evidence of marine fossils found in the Taihang Mountains to infer geological processes caused shifting of seashores over time,^[3] and uses petrified bamboos found underground in Yan'an, to argue for gradual climate change.^[4]
1320-1390 — Avicenna's theory of petrifying fluids is elaborated on by Albert of Saxony.^[2]
c. 1500 — Leonardo da Vinci uses ichnofossils to complement his hypothesis concerning the biogenic nature of body fossils.^[5]

17th century

1665 — In his book Micrographia Robert Hooke compares petrified wood to wood, concludes that petrified wood formed from wood soaked in mineral-rich water, and argues that fossils like Ammonite shells were produced the same way, sparking debate over the organic origin of fossils and the possibility of extinction.^[6]
1669 — Nicolas Steno writes that some kinds of rock formed from layers of sediment deposited in water, and that fossils were organic remains buried in the process.^[6]
1699 - Edward Lhuyd names the new sauropod genus and species " Ruttelum implicatum ". By doing so, he names the first prehistoric creature that is recognizable as a dinosaur.^{[ citation needed ]}

18th century

1770 — The fossilized bones of a huge animal are found in a quarry near Maastricht in the Netherlands. In 1808 Georges Cuvier identified it as an extinct marine reptile and in 1822 William Conybeare names it Mosasaurus .^[7]^[8]
1789 — The skeleton of a large animal is unearthed in Argentina. In 1796 Cuvier reports that it had an affinity to modern tree sloths and names it Megatherium . ^[9]
1796 — Cuvier presents a paper on living and fossil elephants that shows that mammoths were a different species from any living elephant. He argues that this proved the reality of extinction, which he attributes to a geological catastrophe.^[10]
1800 — Cuvier writes that a drawing of a fossil found in Bavaria shows a flying reptile; in 1809 he names it Pterodactyl .

19th century

1804 — Cuvier writes about fossils of extinct mammals from the Paris Basin, arguing that they are similar to other mammals such as ruminants but also differ by dental and postcranial morphologies. He named two genera Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium .
1808 — Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart publish preliminary results of their survey of the geology of the Paris Basin that uses the fossils found in different strata to reconstruct the geologic history of the region.^[11]
1811 — Mary Anning and her brother Joseph discover the fossilized remains of an Ichthyosaur at Lyme Regis.
1812 - Cuvier draws skeletal reconstructions of "Palaeotherium" minor (= Plagiolophus minor), "Anoplotherium medium" (= Xiphodon gracilis), and, most famously, Anoplotherium commune based on known fossil remains (of which A. commune was the most nearly complete) and publishes them in his 1812 summary of fossil mammals from Paris. He also drew speculative reconstructions of the muscles of A. commune to showcase its robustness but did not publish them out of concern of negative perceptions on speculations.
1815 — William Smith published The Map that Changed the World , the first geologic map of England, Wales, and southern Scotland, using fossils to correlate rock strata.
1821 — William Buckland analyzes Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire, containing the bones of lions, elephants and rhinoceros, and concludes it was a prehistoric hyena den.
1821-1822 — Mary Anning discovers the world's first Plesiosaur skeleton at Lyme Regis.
1822 — Mary Ann Mantell and Gideon Mantell discover fossil teeth of the dinosaur Iguanodon .
1822 — The editor of the French journal Journal de Phisique, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, invents the word "paleontologie" for the reconstruction of ancient animals and plants from fossils.
1823 — Buckland finds a human skeleton with mammoth remains at Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula, but at the time it is not accepted that this showed they coexisted.^[12]
1824 — Buckland finds lower jaw of the carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus .
1829 — Buckland publishes paper on work he and Mary Anning had done identifying and analyzing fossilized feces found at Lyme Regis and elsewhere. Buckland coins the term "coprolite" for them, and uses them to analyze ancient food chains.^[13]
1830 — The Cuvier–Geoffroy debate in Paris on the determination of animal structure
1831 — Mantell publishes an influential paper entitled "The Age of Reptiles" summarizing evidence of an extended period during which large reptiles had been the dominant animals.^[14]
1832 — Mantell finds partial skeleton of the dinosaur Hylaeosaurus .
1836 — Edward Hitchcock describes footprints (Eubrontes and Otozoum) of giant birds from Jurassic formations in Connecticut. Later they would be recognized as dinosaur tracks.
1841 — Anatomist Richard Owen creates a new order of reptiles, dinosauria , for animals: Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus, found by Mantell and Buckland.
1841 — The first global geologic timescale is defined by John Phillips based on the type of fossils found in different rock layers. He coins the term "Mesozoic" for what Mantell had called "The Age of Reptiles."
1856 — Fossils are found in the Neander Valley in Germany that Johann Carl Fuhlrott and Hermann Schaaffhausen recognize as a human different from modern people. A few years later William King names Homo neanderthalensis .
1858 — The first dinosaur skeleton found in the United States, Hadrosaurus , is excavated and described by Joseph Leidy.
1859 — Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species .
1861 — The first Archaeopteryx , skeleton is found in Bavaria, Germany, and recognized as a transitional form between reptiles and birds.
1869 — Joseph Lockyer starts the scientific journal Nature .
1871 — Othniel Charles Marsh discovers the first American pterosaur fossils.
1874-77 — Marsh finds a series of Equid fossils in the American West that shed light on the evolution of the horse.
1877 — The first Diplodocus skeleton is found near Cañon City, Colorado.
1891 — Eugene Dubois discovers fossils of "Java Man" (Homo erectus) in Indonesia.

20th century

1901 — Petroleum geologist W.W. Orcutt recovers first fossils from the La Brea Tar Pits in Southern California, a rich source of ice age mammal remains.
1905 — Dippy the diplodocus is exhibited in London's Natural History Museum; its multiple casts and high profile make the word dinosaur a household name
1905 — Tyrannosaurus rex , later the world's most famous dinosaur species, is first described and named by Henry Fairfield Osborn.
1909 — Cambrian fossils in the Burgess Shale are discovered by Charles Walcott.
1912 — Continental Drift is proposed by Alfred Wegener, leading to plate tectonics, which explained many patterns of ancient biogeography revealed by the fossil record.
1912 — Charles Dawson announces discovery of "Piltdown Man" in England, a hoax that would confuse paleoanthropology until the fossils were revealed as forgeries in 1953.^[15]
1912-15 — Spinosaurus is found in North Africa and is speculated to be the largest terrestrial predator that ever lived.
1920 — Andrew Douglass proposes dendrochronology (tree-ring dating).
1924 — Raymond Dart examines fossils of "Taung Child," found by quarrymen in South Africa, and names Australopithecus africanus .
1944 — The publication of Tempo and Mode in Evolution by George Gaylord Simpson integrates paleontology into the modern evolutionary synthesis.
1946 — Reginald Sprigg discovers fossils of the Ediacaran biota in Australia. In the 1960s Martin Glaessner would show that they were pre-Cambrian.
1947 — Willard Libby introduces carbon-14 dating.
1953 — Stanley A. Tyler discovers microfossils in the gunflint chert formation of cyanobacteria that created pre-Cambrian stromatolites approximately 2 billion years ago.
1972 — Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould propose punctuated equilibrium, claiming that the evolutionary history of most species involves long intervals of stasis between relatively short periods of rapid change.
1974 — Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover a 3.5 million-year-old female hominid fossil that is 40% complete and name it "Lucy."
1980 — Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel propose the Alvarez hypothesis, that a comet or asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, including the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, and enriching the iridium in the K–T boundary.
1982 — Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup publish a statistical analysis of the fossil record of marine invertebrates that shows a pattern (possibly cyclical) of repeated mass extinctions.
1984 — Hou Xianguang discovers the Maotianshan Shales Cambrian fossil site in the Yunnan province of China.
1993 — Johannes G.M. Thewissen and Sayed Taseer Hussain discover fossils of the amphibious whale ancestor Ambulocetus in Pakistan.
1996 — Li Yumin discovers a fossil of the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx showing evidence of feathers in the Liaoning province of China.

21st century

2004 — Tiktaalik , a transitional form between lobe-finned fish and tetrapods is discovered in Canada by Ted Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin, and Farish A. Jenkins Jr.
2009 — Fossils of Titanoboa , a giant snake, are unearthed in the coal mines of Cerrejón in La Guajira, Colombia, suggesting paleocene equatorial temperatures were higher than today.^[16]
2016 — Tail fossils of a baby species of Coelurosaur, fully preserved in amber including soft tissue, are found in Myanmar by Lida Xing^[17]

Related Research Articles

A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record. Though the fossil record is incomplete, numerous studies have demonstrated that there is enough information available to give a good understanding of the pattern of diversification of life on Earth. In addition, the record can predict and fill gaps such as the discovery of Tiktaalik in the arctic of Canada.

Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist. She became known internationally for her discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset, Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier, known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.

In geology, catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This contrasts with uniformitarianism, according to which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, brought about all the Earth's geological features. The proponents of uniformitarianism held that the present was "the key to the past", and that all geological processes throughout the past resembled those that can be observed today. Since the 19th-century disputes between catastrophists and uniformitarians, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the scientific consensus accepts that some catastrophic events occurred in the geologic past, but regards these as explicable as extreme examples of natural processes which can occur.

Iguanodon, named in 1825, is a genus of iguanodontian dinosaur. While many species found worldwide have been classified in the genus Iguanodon, dating from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, taxonomic revision in the early 21st century has defined Iguanodon to be based on one well-substantiated species: I. bernissartensis, which lived during the Barremian to early Aptian ages of the Early Cretaceous in Belgium, Germany, England, and Spain, between about 126 and 122 million years ago. Iguanodon was a large, bulky herbivore, measuring up to 9–11 metres (30–36 ft) in length and 4.5 metric tons in body mass. Distinctive features include large thumb spikes, which were possibly used for defense against predators, combined with long prehensile fifth fingers able to forage for food.

Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct vertebrates. It also tries to connect, by using the evolutionary timeline, the animals of the past and their modern-day relatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gideon Mantell</span> British scientist and obstetrician

Gideon Algernon Mantell MRCS FRS was an English obstetrician, geologist and palaeontologist. His attempts to reconstruct the structure and life of Iguanodon began the scientific study of dinosaurs: in 1822 he was responsible for the discovery of the first fossil teeth, and later much of the skeleton, of Iguanodon. Mantell's work on the Cretaceous of southern England was also important.

William Buckland DD, FRS was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist.

A coprolite is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour rather than morphology. The name is derived from the Greek words κόπρος and λίθος. They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Before this, they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones". They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to over 60 centimetres.

Hylaeosaurus is a herbivorous ankylosaurian dinosaur that lived about 136 million years ago, in the late Valanginian stage of the early Cretaceous period of England. It was found in the Grinstead Clay Formation.

Kirkdale Cave is a cave and fossil site located in Kirkdale near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England. It was discovered by workmen in 1821, and found to contain fossilized bones of a variety of mammals from the Eemian interglacial, when temperatures were comparable to contemporary times, including animals currently absent from Britain or globally extinct, including hippopotamuses, straight-tusked elephants, the narrow-nosed rhinoceros, and cave hyenas.

The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Ann Mantell</span>

Mary Ann Mantell was a British fossil collector and the wife of the British paleontologist Gideon Mantell. She is credited – although this is disputed – with the discovery of the first fossils of Iguanodon and provided several pen and ink sketches of the fossils for her husband's scientific description of the Iguanodon.

Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset, was the first pictorial representation of a scene of prehistoric life based on evidence from fossil reconstructions, a genre now known as paleoart.

Paleontology in New Jersey refers to paleontological research in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The state is especially rich in marine deposits.

Paleontology in South Dakota refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of South Dakota. South Dakota is an excellent source of fossils as finds have been widespread throughout the state. During the early Paleozoic era South Dakota was submerged by a shallow sea that would come to be home to creatures like brachiopods, cephalopods, corals, and ostracoderms. Local sea levels rose and fall during the Carboniferous and the sea left completely during the Permian. During the Triassic, the state became a coastal plain, but by the Jurassic it was under a sea where ammonites lived. Cretaceous South Dakota was also covered by a sea that was home to mosasaurs. The sea remained in place after the start of the Cenozoic before giving way to a terrestrial mammal fauna including the camel Poebrotherium, three-toed horses, rhinoceroses, saber-toothed cat, and titanotheres. During the Ice Age glaciers entered the state, which was home to mammoths and mastodons. Local Native Americans interpreted fossils as the remains of the water monster Unktehi and used bits of Baculites shells in magic rituals to summon buffalo herds. Local fossils came to the attention of formally trained scientists with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Cretaceous horned dinosaur Triceratops horridus is the South Dakota state fossil.

Paleontology in Nebraska refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Nebraska. Nebraska is world-famous as a source of fossils. During the early Paleozoic, Nebraska was covered by a shallow sea that was probably home to creatures like brachiopods, corals, and trilobites. During the Carboniferous, a swampy system of river deltas expanded westward across the state. During the Permian period, the state continued to be mostly dry land. The Triassic and Jurassic are missing from the local rock record, but evidence suggests that during the Cretaceous the state was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, where ammonites, fish, sea turtles, and plesiosaurs swam. The coasts of this sea were home to flowers and dinosaurs. During the early Cenozoic, the sea withdrew and the state was home to mammals like camels and rhinoceros. Ice Age Nebraska was subject to glacial activity and home to creatures like the giant bear Arctodus, horses, mammoths, mastodon, shovel-tusked proboscideans, and Saber-toothed cats. Local Native Americans devised mythical explanations for fossils like attributing them to water monsters killed by their enemies, the thunderbirds. After formally trained scientists began investigating local fossils, major finds like the Agate Springs mammal bone beds occurred. The Pleistocene mammoths Mammuthus primigenius, Mammuthus columbi, and Mammuthus imperator are the Nebraska state fossils.

Paleontology in the United States refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the United States. Paleontologists have found that at the start of the Paleozoic era, what is now "North" America was actually in the southern hemisphere. Marine life flourished in the country's many seas. Later the seas were largely replaced by swamps, home to amphibians and early reptiles. When the continents had assembled into Pangaea drier conditions prevailed. The evolutionary precursors to mammals dominated the country until a mass extinction event ended their reign.

The research history of Anoplotherium spans back to 1804 when Georges Cuvier first described the fossils of this extinct artiodactyl and named the genus after describing Palaeotherium, making it one of the first fossil mammal genera to be described as well as having one of the earliest official taxonomic authorities. It was also amongst the first fossil genera to be reconstructed by drawings and biomechanics. Subsequent descriptions of fossil evidence by Cuvier are also said to have been some of the earliest instances of palaeoneurology and palaeopathology. Anoplotherium was a significant find in palaeontological history and was once an iconic element of text and classroom sources of palaeontology, geology, and natural history. Today, it has a lessened cultural status compared to the 19th century as a result of public interest in Mesozoic dinosaurs or Neogene-Quaternary mammals, but it is still regularly acknowledged in sources of the history of palaeontology.

Paleohistology is the study of the microstructure of fossilized skeletal tissues, offering insights into the biology, growth patterns, and physiology of extinct organisms.

References

↑ "Evolution and Paleontology in the Ancient World". University of California Museum of Paleontology. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
1 2 3 Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. p. 24. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.
↑ Shen Kuo,Mengxi Bitan (梦溪笔谈; Dream Pool Essays ) (1088)
↑ Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Caves Books Ltd. p. 614. ISBN 0-253-34547-2.
↑ Baucon, A. 2010. Leonardo da Vinci, the founding father of ichnology. Palaios 25. Abstract available from the author's homepage
1 2 Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 45–68. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.
↑ Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), p. 158
↑ "Mosasaurus hoffmanni - The First Discovery of a Mosasaur?". Oceans of Kansas. Retrieved 2012-07-22.
↑ Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), pp. 25-32
↑ Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 101–109. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.
↑ Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), pp. 127-156
↑ Rudwick, Martin Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008) pp. 77-79
↑ Rudwick, Martin Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008) pp. 153-155
↑ Cadbury, Deborah The Dinosaur Hunters (2000) pp. 171-175.
↑ Lewin, Roger (1987), Bones of Contention , ISBN 0-671-52688-X
↑ Head, Jason J.; Jonathan I. Bloch; Alexander K. Hastings; Jason R. Bourque; Edwin A. Cadena; Fabiany A. Herrera; P. David Polly; Carlos A. Jaramillo (2009). "Giant boid snake from the paleocene neotropics reveals hotter past equatorial temperatures". Nature . 457 (7230): 715–718. doi:10.1038/nature07671. PMID 19194448.
↑ Romey, Kristin. "WATCH: PICTURES OF THE FIRST DINOSAUR TAIL EVER PRESERVED IN AMBER". National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-26.

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[1] "Evolution and Paleontology in the Ancient World". University of California Museum of Paleontology. Retrieved 2012-07-05.

[Rudwick-2] 1 2 3 Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. p. 24. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.

[3] Shen Kuo,Mengxi Bitan (梦溪笔谈; Dream Pool Essays ) (1088)

[needham_volume_3_614-4] Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Caves Books Ltd. p. 614. ISBN 0-253-34547-2.

[5] Baucon, A. 2010. Leonardo da Vinci, the founding father of ichnology. Palaios 25. Abstract available from the author's homepage

[Rudwick45_68-6] 1 2 Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 45–68. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.

[7] Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), p. 158

[8] "Mosasaurus hoffmanni - The First Discovery of a Mosasaur?". Oceans of Kansas. Retrieved 2012-07-22.

[9] Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), pp. 25-32

[10] Rudwick, M. J. S. (1985). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 101–109. ISBN 0-226-73103-0.

[11] Rudwick, Martin, Georges Cuvier: Fossil Bones and Geological Catastrophes (1997), pp. 127-156

[12] Rudwick, Martin Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008) pp. 77-79

[13] Rudwick, Martin Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008) pp. 153-155

[14] Cadbury, Deborah The Dinosaur Hunters (2000) pp. 171-175.

[15] Lewin, Roger (1987), Bones of Contention , ISBN 0-671-52688-X

[16] Head, Jason J.; Jonathan I. Bloch; Alexander K. Hastings; Jason R. Bourque; Edwin A. Cadena; Fabiany A. Herrera; P. David Polly; Carlos A. Jaramillo (2009). "Giant boid snake from the paleocene neotropics reveals hotter past equatorial temperatures". Nature . 457 (7230): 715–718. doi:10.1038/nature07671. PMID 19194448.

[17] Romey, Kristin. "WATCH: PICTURES OF THE FIRST DINOSAUR TAIL EVER PRESERVED IN AMBER". National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-26.

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