Excerpt from Palaeontology, or a Systematic Summary of Extinct Animals and Their Geological Relations
Paleontology is the science which treats of the evidences in the earth"s strata of organic beings, which mainly consist of petrified or fossil remains of plants and animals, belonging, for the most part, to species that are extinct.
The endeavour to interpret such evidences has led to comparisons of the forms and structures of existing plants and animals, which have greatly and rapidly advanced the science of comparative anatomy, especially as applied to the animal kingdom, and more particularly to the hard and enduring parts of the animal frame, such as corals, shells, spines, crusts, scales, scutes, bones, and teeth.
In applying the results of these comparisons to the restoration of extinct species, physiology has benefited by the study of the relations of structure to function requisite to obtain an idea of the food and habits of such species. It has thus been enriched by the well-defined law of "correlation of structures."
Zoology has gained an immense accession of subjects through the determination of the nature and affinities of extinct animals, and its best aims have been proportionally advanced. Much further and truer insight has been carried into the natural arrangement and subdivision of the classes of animals since pal?ontology expanded our survey of them.
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