Many of us, at some point or another, dreamed of hunting for dinosaur fossils when we grew up. Paleontology—the study of natural history through fossils—is the scientific reality of this. It encompasses all ancient lifeforms that left their trace in the earth, from stromatolites (microbial reefs up to 3.5 billion years old) to megafauna.
source https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fossils-responsibly-professional-paleontologist.html
