fossils and their interpretation.

The word "palæontology" means literally the "science of living things of
long ago." It deals directly with the remains of animals and plants found
as fossils, and it interprets them through its knowledge of the way modern
animals are constructed and of the changes the earth's crust has
undergone. A skull-like object may be found in a coal field and may come
into the hands of the palæontologist: from his acquaintance with the head
skeletons of recent types he will be able to assign the extinct creature
which possessed the skull to a definite place in the animal scale and to
understand its nearer or wider affinities with other animals of later
times and of earlier epochs. In doing these things palæontology employs
the methods of comparative anatomy with which we have now become familiar.
In the performance of its other tasks, however, palæontology must work
independently. It is necessary to know when a fossilized animal lived, not
that its time need be measured by an absolute number of a few thousands or
millions of years antedating our own era, for that is impossible. But the
important thing is to know its relative age, and whether it preceded or
followed other similar animals of its own group or of different divisions.
The rocks themselves must be understood, how they have been formed and how
they are related in mineralogical nature and in historical succession.
Palæontology also deals with a number of subjects that are not in
themselves biological, such as the combination of circumstances necessary
for the adequate preservation of fossil relics. In so far as it is
concerned with physical matters, as contrasted with strictly biological
data, it is one with geology. Indeed, the investigators in these two
departments must always work side by side and render mutual assistance to
one another in countless ways, for each division needs the results of the
other in order to accomplish its own distinct purposes. It must be evident
to every one that it is impossible to understand the meaning of fossils