>>11938095Paleontology dates back to at least the Greeks. Xenophanes wrote about shellfish fossils. Leonardo Da Vinci also wrote about fossils, and mused about why fossils of organisms (and related organisms) that are typically found in the ocean have been found on mountains. Da Vinci was also one of the first people to correctly argue that fossils are the byproduct of organic material, instead of rocks that just happened to be shaped like organisms. Religious scholars during the age of reason spent much of their time trying to find a biblical explanation for these fossils
>>11938215fossils of bones are extremely fragile, and due to the inherent nature of the fossilization process, not many fossils are found of complete organisms. if you go to a museum, the bones that make up exhibits likely came from multiple dig sites around the world
>inb4 someone autistically points out that most museum fossils are actually replicas of the actual fossils, missing the entire point of this post 
