Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
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Paleontology I've always had a keen interest in the origins of life, Biology, and Science in general. As such, this page will remain a work-in-progress that features aspects of paleontology that are of interest to me. And, please don't misunderstand; I am a rank amateur and not at all an authority on the topic other than my deep passion for learning more about the origins of life and evolution on our planet! Paleontology (or, sometimes, palaeontology) is defined as the scientific study of life existent prior to, but sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch [The Holocene is the geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene (at 11,700 calendar years BP) and continues to the present]. Paleontology includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology). Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology, but differs from archaeology in that it excludes the study of morphologically modern humans. |
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Click Here for my page on Evolution... |
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Click Here for my page on Life... |
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Click Here for my page on Cosmology... |
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Click Here for my page about Biology! |
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Click Here for my page about Plants! |
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Click Here for my page about Life... |
"When people talk about ancient life, they frequently talk about the 'fossil record.' But let's be clear: The fossil record isn't a tidy clean recording. No one went to a studio and methodically laid down some tracks, the way a rock and roll band records an album. The evidence embedded in Earth's rocks is more like the work of a band that recorded with a faulty microphone and then accidentally recoded over most of the tracks. On top of that, when they were finished, they lost almost all of the final versions. Most living things never get fossilized, and most fossils end up in places where they are impossible to discover. It is impressive that paleontologists have been able to reconstruct the lives of individual plants and animals. It is downright amazing that they have found enough fossils to deduce the broad sweep of evolution's great busts and booms - including one wild episode of innovation that led to all of the large animals living today."
- Bill Nye in his book, Undeniable (Evolution, and the Science of Creation), p. 95
If by some accident, vertebrates had vanished in the Cambrian along with most of the experimental forms, how would the history of life have unfolded? There certainly would have been no dinosaurs, nor would there be mammals - or humans. Each time you replay the tape of life's history, it comes out differently. If the random, unpredictable effects of an asteroid impact in Mexico and huge eruptions of lava in India 65 million years ago had not wiped out the dinosaurs, the mammals would never have grown any bigger than they had during the 120 million years of the Age of Dinosaurs, and humans would not be here, either. The modern world is an improbable, lucky accident, one of millions of possible ways in which the scenarios of life could have progressed. All living organisms are not the inevitable outcome of long-term evolution, but the descendants of ancestors that happened to survive many mass extinctions and other random events."
- Donald R. Prothero in his book,
The Story of Life in 25 Fossils
(Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution), p. 48.
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