Palaeontology 🦖

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Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology[a] or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their /c/paleoecology. Read more...

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Smithsonian's Paleobiology website
University of California Museum of Paleontology
The Paleontological Society
The Palaeontological Association
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
The Paleontology Portal
"Geology, Paleontology & Theories of the Earth" – a collection of more than 100 digitised landmark and early books on Earth sciences at the Linda Hall Library

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Horses lived in the Americas for millions of years – new research helps paleontologists understand the fossils we’ve found and those that are missing from the record (theconversation.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Many people assume that horses first came to the Americas when Spanish explorers brought them here about 500 years ago. In fact, recent research has confirmed a European origin for horses associated with humans in the American Southwest and Great Plains.

But those weren’t the first horses in North America. The family Equidae, which includes domesticated varieties of horses and donkeys along with zebras and their kin, is actually native to the Americas. The fossil record reveals horse origins here more than 50 million years ago, as well as their extinction throughout the Americas during the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Why are there so few horse remains at excavation sites? Usually the most present are only one or two.