That five-year-old dinosaur expert who can tell a trilobite from a pterodactyl and tell you which thrived during the Jurassic period? She’s a budding paleontology expert.
Scientific language aims at clarity, and scientists generally speak to each other in Greek and Latin. The commonly used suffix -ology comes from Greek, and it means "the study of." The prefix paleo means "old." So, paleontology is the study of that which is old—really, really old. The word paleontology entered the English language in the nineteenth century, just as scientists were making a systematic effort to analyze fossil records.
