Paleontology

Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life on Earth, especially through fossils, and is an important tool for studying organisms' evolution. A traveller can find museums and dig sites which tell the story of our planet before recorded history, before mankind, before land animals, even before vertebrates.

The oldest fossils go back over 600 million years. Among the most interesting are:
 * the dinosaurs (reptiles of the Mezozoic Era, 245 to 66 million years ago)
 * other great beasts such as mammoths and sabertooth tigers
 * (mammals of the Pliocene epoch, about 5 million years ago, to the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago)


 * the various extinct human or proto-human species (around 3.5 million to 40,000 years ago)
 * see early explorers for some of their migrations

Of course there are many other epochs, each with different fossils.

For the history of modern humans, Homo sapiens, during the last 50,000 years, see Archaeological sites and Historical travel.

Some travellers also dig up fossils themselves; see Rockhounds.

Understand
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

- Theodosius Dobzhansky

Fossils are most often formed when some creature is buried in mud or silt which later turns into sedimentary rock, typically shale or limestone. Most fossil beds are on the sites of ancient bodies of water &mdash; rivers, lakes, marshes or seas. Creatures may also be preserved in other ways, caught in amber or tar, or frozen like some mammoths found in Siberia.

There are both animal and plant fossils. Animals' bones and other durable parts like scales or feathers are often turned to rock, but generally something a bit different from the surrounding rock so the fossil can be recognized. Sometimes the bones can be separated from the surrounding rock; this is how the museums get skeletons. Some plants become petrified wood, and coal may preserve traces of the plants it is formed from.

Not all paleontology involves fossils. In particular, while some sites for ancient humans or proto-humans may have fossils others have unfossilized bones, and in any case the artifacts that the people made &mdash; tools, works of art, pottery, etc. &mdash; are at least as interesting as the bones.

Museums
Too many museums to mention have paleontological exhibits; almost any natural history museum worldwide has some, and many other museums have a natural history section.

Museums routinely trade exhibits. A European museum might have Neanderthal material, a North American one dinosaurs, and an Australian one some of that region's unique megafauna. After some trades, all three museums might have exhibits in all three categories. Fine specimens are also sometimes sold at auction, the better ones at prices where only museums, millionaires and large companies can afford to bid. For example, Google have a fine example of Tyrannosaurus rex on their headquarters campus.

Here is a selection of museums with collections beyond the usual.

Africa
Many of the sites for mankind's earliest ancestors are along Africa's Great Rift Valley.

Americas
The region just east of the Rocky Mountains has many of the world's finest dinosaur sites, on both sides of the US/Canada border, and both countries also have other fossil sites.

Asia




Australia




Do
In some places you can actually "fossil hunt" yourself, but this may be subject to a number of local regulations, as well as import/export restrictions when crossing borders. In some cases what you find in terms of "fossils" is so commonplace that no protection need to be enforced, but it is a great way to spend a day with children (especially the "dinosaur crowd") as well as to introduce amateur paleontologists to the subject. Some museums that sit in appropriate geological contexts even offer fossil hunting as a part of their program and you should certainly take advantage of that if possible. One of the eras that is rather "packed" with common - though pretty - fossils is limestone from the Jurassic era as it can be found in Franconian Switzerland and the English Jurassic Coast.

If you want to look for rare or valuable fossils, you would most likely have to connect with a university or science-institute who do more sophisticated digs and actually find fossils that haven't been found or at least not been scientifically described before. In many cases those digs are only open to people with legitimate science degrees in the appropriate field(s) or studying towards one. In case you need to cross borders for such, a tourist visa may sometimes not be the category to apply for in those cases.