Dr Diego Garcia-Bellido was recently involved in uncovering some unusual fossils at Emu Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
Find out what drives palaeontologist, Dr Garcia-Bellido in his pursuit to study fossils in the February 2015 eScience magazine.
In the feature Dr Garcia-Bellido explores how the study of fossils can help us understand evolution.
“When we take into account that, although there are an estimated 2-20 million species alive today (of which about 1.5 million have been described), these probably constitute less than 1% of all the diversity through time. In other words, approximately 99% of the species that have ever lived on our planet are extinct.
These extinct species are the subject of our study. How and where did they live? What did they eat? How were they related to one another? How were they affected by the environment? These are just some of the questions a palaeontologist tries to answer with fossils.”
