Editing Paleontology (section)

===Paleoclimatology===
{{main|Paleoclimatology}}
[[File:Earth's average surface temperature over the past 500 million years.png|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Estimated global temperature across the last 500 million years]]
Paleoclimatology is the study of the ancient [[climate]]s, and is a "paleo-science" alongside paleoecology and [[paleoceanography]].<ref name="overpeck1995"/> Studies on the climate before and during the Quaternary, where direct measurements become available, are beginning to converge in scope, but the term "paleoclimatology" remains often restricted to the former. Before the identification and acceptance of plate tectonics, paleoclimatology had been applied from the observation that fossils were sometimes found where the climate was currently not suitable to that organism. Little discussion was had about the changing of the climate beyond the [[Last Glacial Maximum]], so paleoclimatology was restricted to the climate of the Quaternary. Inconsistencies between climate-significant rocks and current geography were not able to be reconciled until plate tectonics demonstrates that [[climate zone]]s were constant but the landmasses beneath them would change. Indicators of the paleoclimate could be found in certain types of rocks, which coupled with reconstructions of the paleogeography showed that climate zones in the past were roughly the same as today, with exceptions. During the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, arid regions were believed to be generally lower in [[latitude]] that at other times in the past, which would be explained by the [[monsoon]]al nature of the continent in the 1970s and the understanding that atmospheric circulation of monsoons also affected the regionality of climates. [[Ocean drilling]] of core samples from the seabed were then used to identify [[isotopes]] that could examine the proportions of [[oxygen]] and [[carbon dioxide]] over time to illustrate the warmth and coldness of ocean waters. In some sense, global paleoclimatology would not be possible without these ocean drilling programs. Numerical modelling of the paleoclimate was employed to further the field, though it struggles with the polar regions and the climate of continental interiors. Further development of paleoclimatology will likely focus on the impact to humans of the alterations to the climate that are occurring, and use information from the past to make predictions about the future.<ref name="parrish2013"/>