The founder or "father" of modern paleobiology was Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877 to 1933), a Hungarian scientist trained at the University of Vienna. He initially termed the discipline "paleophysiology."
However, credit for coining the word paleobiology itself should go to Professor Charles Schuchert. He proposed the term in 1904 so as to initiate "a broad new science" joining "traditional paleontology with the evidence and insights of geology and isotopic chemistry."[1]
On the other hand, Charles Doolittle Walcott, a Smithsonian adventurer, has been cited as the "founder of Precambrian paleobiology." Although best known as the discoverer of the mid-CambrianBurgess shale animal fossils, in 1883 this American curator found the "first Precambrian fossil cells known to science" – a stromatolite reef then known as Cryptozoonalgae. In 1899 he discovered the first acritarch fossil cells, a Precambrian algalphytoplankton he named Chuaria. Lastly, in 1914, Walcott reported "minute cells and chains of cell-like bodies" belonging to Precambrian purple bacteria.[2]
During the early part of the 21st-century, two paleobiologists Anjali Goswami and Thomas Halliday, studied the evolution of mammaliaforms during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (between 299 million to 12,000 years ago).[5] Additionally, they uncovered and studied the morphological disparity and rapid evolutionary rates of living organisms near the end and in the aftermath of the Cretaceous mass extinction (145 million to 66 million years ago).[6][7]
^Walcott's contributions are described by J. William Schopf (1999) on pages 23 to 31. Another good source is E. L. Yochelson (1997), Charles Doolittle Walcott: Paleontologist (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press).
^The paleobiologic discoveries of Tyler, Barghoorn and Schopf are related on pages 35 to 70 of Schopf (1999).
^The Apex chert microflora is related by Schopf (1999) himself on pages 71 to 100.
^Brusatte, Steve (2022). The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us (1st ed.). United States: Mariner Books. ISBN978-0062951519.
^Halliday, Thomas (2022). Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds (1st ed.). United States: Random House. ISBN978-0593132883.
Robert B. Eckhardt (2000). Human Paleobiology. Cambridge Studies in Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-45160-4 and ISBN978-0-521-45160-4. This book connects paleoanthropology and archeology to the field of paleobiology.
Douglas H. Erwin (2006). Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-00524-9. An investigation by a paleobiologist into the many theories as to what happened during the catastrophic Permian-Triassic transition.
Donald R. Prothero (2004). Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology. New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN0-07-366170-8 and ISBN978-0-07-366170-4. An acclaimed book for the novice fossil-hunter and young adults.
David Sepkoski. Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (University of Chicago Press; 2012) 432 pages; A history since the mid-19th century, with a focus on the "revolutionary" era of the 1970s and early 1980s and the work of Stephen Jay Gould and David Raup.
Bernard Ziegler and R. O. Muir (1983). Introduction to Palaeobiology. Chichester, England: E. Horwood. ISBN0-470-27552-9 and ISBN978-0-470-27552-8. A classic, British introductory textbook.
