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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Could dinosaurs have had symbiotic relationships with other animals? (www.sciencefocus.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure, why not? It's likely that some of them did. That said, I can't think of any examples we know of off the bat for sure.

The example of birds cleaning larger animals is probably fairly close to something that could have happened, I've seen the concept floated that some small pterosaurs might have filled a similar role, picking pests off of the large herbivores.

But to actually have proof of a symbiotic relationship in prehistory would be pretty difficult I'd imagine, since that kind of behavior is hard to capture in a fossil.