Aktuo-Paläontologie
The German term Aktuo-paläontologie (Actualistic Paleontology) was proposed by Richter (1928), and defined by him as the science of the origin and present-day mode of formation of future fossils, in the widest sense. It is simply the application of the uniformitarian principle (“the present is the key to the past”) to paleontological problems. The term is very similar in meaning to neontology , as opposed to paleontology, and may be regarded as the “paleontology” of living animals, including the “paleoecology” of modern environments. Herein, the term is used synonymously with neontology.
Some authors regarded the term Aktuo-paläontologie as inappropriate because actual (= present; current) and paleoare contradictory and ought to be avoided in a single term, and because it seemed impossible to speak of paleontology of the Recent. Most early actual-paleontological studies were independent of fossil application. Today, however, focus comes from paleontological...
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Warme, J.E. (1979). Actualistic paleontology . In: Paleontology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31078-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31078-9_2
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