Paesta Podcasts

You Asked, We Answered! Transcript for the podcast These career fields are front and center in pop culture, thanks to Hollywood blockbuster films, such as the Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones series. Unfortunately, popular culture can sometimes blur the boundaries and misrepresent these disciplines. This podcast explores the differences between the three fields of paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Paleontology is the field of science that uses fossils to study life throughout geologic time. Note that a fossil is defined as the remains of an organism, whether it be pieces of the actual body or traces of a once-living organism’s activity, that dates back to at least 10,000 years ago. Both animal and plant fossils are collected, observed, described, and classified. Paleontologists use fossils to learn more about what the Earth was like in the past and how environments changed over time. Fossils also help us learn about evolving diversity—when did a new species come about, and when did that other spe