A Guide to Paleontological Terms

Learning about palaeontology is great, but one of the greatest challenges in getting into it is understanding the various technical terms used all the time in the science. So to help with this we've made an introductory guide to some paleontological terms and ideas.

Anatomy Guide:

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[Abahrelgazalia]

Small correction: "Dorsal" and "Ventral" are not toward the "top" and "bottom" respectively. Rather, at least in vertebrates, they are toward the spine and the sternum, respectively. This isn't super relevant for most vertebrates, but it's important for when you talk about oddballs like humans (for whom ventral is forward) or tree sloths (for whom ventral is up). In fact, "anterior" and "ventral" mean the same thing on a human.

Anterior/Posterior and Superior/Inferior are terms relative to the way the animal generally holds itself. Dorsal/Ventral and Cranial/Caudal are absolute terms that reference the animal's anatomy.

[stevieb]

My little boy loves dinosaurs. He’s 4 and loves this channel! I can’t believe the quality of these videos! Great stuff, thank you so much for educating me and my son!

[nemilyk]

Interesting to note of tyrannosaurs, like the skull shown at 9:50, is that they have fused premaxilla and nasals, while most therapods don't. This makes their skulls much stronger, and is one of the tell-tale morphological signs that a skull belongs to a tyrannosaur, along with the smaller premaxillary teeth at the front of the jaw used for scraping meat off bones.

...I may or may not have been watching a lot of Thomas Holtz and David Hone lectures lately...

[luyandolove]

1:07 AREAS OF STUDY
1:26 Morphology - Study of the physical shape and structure of an organism
1:40 Osteology - Study of how the skeleton works and it’s structure. Only looks at the bones
1:53 Phylogenetics - Evolution of groups of organisms. Relationship of organisms and their ancestors
2:16 Ontogeny - Study of how organisms change as they get older.
2:52 Taphonomy - Study of the processes of an organism between their death to their fossilization
3:27 Ichnology - Study of traces fossils i.e. Burrows or footprints
3:42 Biostratigraphy - The relative dating of rock formations using fossils.

4:23 BASICS OF ANATOMY
4:36 Anterior vs Posterior - Towards the front/head vs Towards the back/tail
4:43 Dorsal vs Ventral - Upper region vs Lower Region
4:51 Medial - Towards the midline
4:53 Lateral - Away from the midline, towards the side
4:59 Proximal vs Distal - Closer to the main body mass vs Away from the main body mass

5:46 SKELETONS
6:09 Osteology Primer - Screenshot for later use
6:14 Skull and Mandible
6:21 Vertebral Column and The Cervical Vertebrae - Neckbones
6:30 Atlas and Axis - Make yo the cervical vertebrates
6:37 Dorsal and Sacral Vertebrae
6:42 Ilium - Hip
6:54 Caudal Vertebrae
7:00 Chevrons - Wouod have contained blood vessels in life
7:10 Ribs and Gastralia(Belly Ribs)
7:22 Limbs
7:26 Scapula and Coracoid - Shoulder girdle
7:32 Humerus, Radius and Ulna - Hands
7:38 Wishbone (idk how to spell that), Present in all theropods and modern birds
7:44 Carpals, metacarpals, Phalanges (Sometimes Unguals/Modified phalange claws)
7:55 Hind limbs and pelvic girdle
7:58 Ischium
8:05 Pubis
8:10 Differences Between Sauriscian and Ornithiscian hips - Screenshot
8:32 Femur, Tibia and Fibula
8:45 Pes - Similar to the hand
8:52 Tarsals and Metatarsal - the carpals and metacarpals of the hand

9:13 SKULL ANATOMY
9:26 Skull Picture- Screenshot
9:30 Mandible and Dentary, Angular and Surangular
9:36 Jaw, Quadrate - Quadratojugal is attached to the Quadrate
9:55 Evolution of T. Rex skull

10:26 SPACES BETWEEN THE BONES (Fenestrae)
10:47 Mandibular and Surangular fenestra
10:53 Nares, Orbit and more fenestrae
11:09 Anapsids skull example - No fenestra
11:20 synapsid skull example - one fenestra behind the temporal orbit
11:30 diapsid skull example - two fenestra behind the eye socket (makes the skull lighter)
11:50 - Euryapsids skull example - Single fenestra behind eye places high on the skull, unnatural, classed as diapsids

12:33 EVOLUTIONARY TERMS
12:57 Cladograms - Shows how various organisms are related to each other
13:11 Clade - Evolutionary organisms on a cladogram, (classes, orders and families)
13:28 - Node and Sister Taxon example
13:44 Monophyletic Clade, Proper/Natural group - Made up of the common ancestor of a group of organisms and their descendants
13:56 Paraphyletic Clade, unnatural/artificial group - Groups with a common ancestor but with some descendants excluded
14:07 Example - Screenshot
14:27 Crown group - contains the most recent common ancestor
14:39 Stem group - extinct relatives of a crown group, always paraphyletic

“There can be no stem group for extinct lineage, stem groups of some Clade can be in crown group for larger Clade”

[koolnomi]

I think a lot of palaeo enthusiasts forget that there are all these technical terms to learn when someone is just first getting into this subject area. This is a brilliant idea and very helpful!

[Bahouudis]

I love the fact that I can separate Paleontology from my school for now, and whenever I want, I'll just take out my notebook to see all the paleontological terms I have written there.

[TheSpeculativeDoodl]

This is so helpful! You should totally make this into a “Paleontology for beginners” type series. You could talk about papers that would be good for beginners to look through or maybe even go a bit more in depth on the anatomy portion and talk about more unique bodily features, be it soft tissues or skeletal elements, and discuss how they could effect modern paleoart

[rachaelhart]

Got to say, this channel is GREATLY underappreciated. I hope it grows well because you guys have good production value and cover interesting topics. This video was a great idea and as usual I love your narration and the choices of images. Keep working hard guys <3

[rayne]

I wonder if YouTube (and/or similar pages) will one day make it possible for everyone to become autodidacts in whatever field they chose. That would be kind of nice, huh?

[johndifrancisco]

This was SO well done! I usually watch these videos because I think Dinosaurs, and history for that matter, are very cool. I actually learned something from this one. I have a hard time keeping things in order and this video helped a lot by showing the basic foundation of Paleontology. I hope you guys make this onto a series. Thanks for the video.

[patrickmccurry]

Fossa meaning hole is why I always laughed at the medication Fosamax which was to treat oseteoporosis. Of all the things to name it... Awesome video as usual.

[funnysecksnumber]

i had no fucking idea what to do for a living for way too long. i guess my childhood dream is coming back to show me that i had this absolute godsend right under my nose this whole time. i watched a 2 episode video series on youtube, by a professor, to learn "how tf do i become one?" because paleontology is not a major in any university in my country. well, now that i know what to do, time to pick up studying and get back into "listening to what the teacher says"

why cant career stuff be more straight forward? you know? just choose a profession, whatever it is, and you can do that. but noooo, i have to go ahead and choose 'geological engineering', learn which classes ill need myself, also make sure the uni im choosing has a paleontologist professor, contact the professor about how im interested in paleontology and get a couple voluntary jobs and stuff, then go on to get a master's degree in paleontology, and THEN i can actually work as a paleontologist. and if i ever want to do academia or do my own research/expeditions, i have a get a PhD which takes ABSOLUTELY FOREVER... but fuck you, you education system thingy! im goddamn committed.

[freaky_owl]

This was actually very helpful for my Zoology lectures, as I have to learn about clades as well as reptile skulls.

[thomaszaccone]

Excellent narrative. Please expand in new episodes. A great source on Reptilian osteology is Romer's "Osteology of the Reptiles", somewhat dated but still useful. He covers all extant reptiles as well as dinosaurs, pterosaurs, etc.

[ericweinerhausen]

Thanks you! I thought I had a good handle on some of these details, but there's a to I didn't know and a lot more I wasn't terribly familiar with. I really enjoyed learning from you. (Thats high praise)

[rubenkoker]

there areliving graptolites (Rhabdopleura ), they live in the english channel and the north sea.

[AS-ozjm]

Can you make a video detailing the conditions needed for fossilization?

[colep]

I love your Channel, it has always been my dream to be a palaeontologist and this video really helped me I’m still young and wont to learn everything about palaeontology keep up the great work and keep making videos

[SharksandDinos]

Thank you for making this video and putting up the sites where we can read those papers. I always wanted to know more about Paleontology, but I just didn't know where to look other than Wikipedia or outdated books.

[its_xander]

Amazing content which I greatly appreciate! Thank you for this video as it helped me greatly in taking paleontology notes for my courses!