A branch of evolutionary biology that draws upon geology to study fossil fauna and flora and their ecologies in order to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships. Crucial to this enterprise are techniques for dating rock formations containing the fossils. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1830) was the first to suggest the use of fossils to trace the age of rocks. Palaeontology not only incorporates knowledge from geology, but also anthropology, archaeology, biology, botany, ecology and zoology, and now consists of a number of sub-fields, such as paleoanthropology (the reconstruction of human evolution), palaeoecology (the study of ecology and climate in the past), and ichnology (the study of fossils tracks and footprints).
See Anthropology, Biology, Cladistics, Ecology, Evolutionary biology, General theory of biological classification, Geology, Phyletic gradualism and punctuated gradualism