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PALEONTOLOGIST
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A specialist in paleontology
Synonyms:
fossilist; palaeontologist; paleontologist
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("paleontologist" is a kind of...):
scientist (a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences)
Instance hyponyms:
Gould; Stephen Jay Gould (United States paleontologist and popularizer of science (1941-2002))
Leakey; Louis Leakey; Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (English paleontologist whose account of fossil discoveries in Tanzania changed theories of human evolution (1903-1972))
Leakey; Mary Douglas Leakey; Mary Leakey (English paleontologist (the wife of Louis Leakey) who discovered the Zinjanthropus skull that was 1,750,000 years old (1913-1996))
Leakey; Richard Erskine Leakey; Richard Leakey (English paleontologist (son of Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey) who continued the work of his parents; he was appointed director of a wildlife preserve in Kenya but resigned under political pressure (born in 1944))
Owen; Sir Richard Owen (English comparative anatomist and paleontologist who was an opponent of Darwinism (1804-1892))
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Teilhard de Chardin (French paleontologist and philosopher (1881-1955))
Derivation:
paleontology (the earth science that studies fossil organisms and related remains)
Context examples:
Paleontologists have identified a new species of titanosaurian, a member of the large-bodied sauropods that thrived during the final period of the dinosaur age, in Tanzania.
(Paleontologists discover new species of titanosaurian dinosaur in Tanzania, NSF)
"Here, we're able to study in great detail how this ancient island evolved — where organisms came from, how they got there and when they got there," K. Christopher Beard, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas (KU) said.
(Fossil discovery adds to understanding of how geological changes affected evolution of mammalian life, National Science Foundation)
The scientists, part of a team of geologists and paleontologists led by Xiaoming Wang of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, uncovered fossil specimens of the Tibetan fox in the Zanda Basin in southern Tibet.
("Out of Tibet" hypothesis: Cradle of evolution for cold-adapted mammals is in Tibet, NSF)
Paleontologists have been working to reconstitute a complete sauropod skeleton from several different specimens that have been unearthed from Angeac-Charente in the last decade — with the reconstruction now around 50 per cent complete.
(140 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur’s Huge Bone Found in Southwest France, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
Paleontologists working in Tanzania have identified a new species of hyaenodont, a type of extinct meat-eating mammal.
(Fossil discovery in Tanzania reveals ancient bobcat-sized carnivore, National Science Foundation)
There’s over 100 bones there, so a whole bunch of the skeleton, and now we get to get down to the fun business of actually studying it, figuring out what it is, said Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
(Sea Monster Swam Oceans 170 Million Years Ago, Voanews)
Located in southwestern France, the Angeac-Charente dig site is unique across all of Europe, with paleontologists having already uncovered around 7,500 bones — from 45 different species of dinosaur — since excavations began back in 2010.
(140 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur’s Huge Bone Found in Southwest France, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
It looks like it was changes in the oceans, in the chemistry and in the ecology of the oceans, and so you had a long-term willowing away of these ichthyosaurs as they became less and less common, less and less diverse, until they trickled away to extinction, and then that is when groups like sharks and ultimately whales and dolphins moved on in," said the paleontologist.
(Sea Monster Swam Oceans 170 Million Years Ago, Voanews)
