Studying the present, understanding the past

Actuopaleontology is an essential discipline to understand the fossil record. It uses the present as a key to understand the past. Actualistic paleontology has been largely used in a vast array of paleontological fields such as ichnology, paleoart or functional morphology. Given its relevance in cur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Caballero, Óscar, Paredes-Aliaga, Ma. Victoria, Costa-Pérez, Mireia, Bueno, Esther, Álvarez-Parra, Sergio, Vilaplana-Climent, Andreu, Manzanares, E.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/182559
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/182559
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Paleontologia
Ambre
Ocells fòssils
Paleontology
Amber
Fossil birds
Descripción
Sumario:Actuopaleontology is an essential discipline to understand the fossil record. It uses the present as a key to understand the past. Actualistic paleontology has been largely used in a vast array of paleontological fields such as ichnology, paleoart or functional morphology. Given its relevance in current and past paleontological studies, here we examine the advantages of this discipline, focusing in four recent works. In them, the study of contemporary groups allows us to know better if it is possible: to know how reliable is amber when studying extinct arthropods communities; to make trophic inferences about extinct elasmobranchs by dental microwear analysis; to reconstruct the morphology of certain fishes depending on its ecological niche or to find the type of flight in extinct birds considering their humerus morphology.