We understand that some words in our field can be long and confusing at times, even for us. Therefore, we’ve assembled this helpful alphabetised list of definitions to make reading our articles a little easier.
Anoxia: without oxygen
Biodiversity: the variety of biological organisms in a particular environment
Clade: a group of all of the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor
Contemporary: (1) modern (2) living at the same time in the same place
Coprolite: fossilised faeces
Extant: alive in the modern world/still existing today
Genus: a taxonomic rank above species (plural: genera)
Infraorder: a collection of animals within an order, larger than a suborder
Invertebrate: animals without a spine
Lithology: the physical characteristics of rocks
Morphology: how an animal looks
Niche: a specific role taken by an organism in a community
Order: a taxonomic rank above family and below class
Palaeocontinent: continents/continental arrangements that existed in the geological past
Palaeoenvironment: the environment that used to be present in an area
Phylogeny: the study of the evolutionary development of organisms or their features
Phylum: a taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class (plural: phyla)
Subfamily: a collection of animals within a family, smaller than a family
Suborder: a collection of animals within an order, smaller than an infraorder
Species: the principal taxonomic unit for naming organisms
Taxon: any rank of taxonomic group (plural: taxa)
Taxonomy: a system of classification of organisms
Thermoregulation: a process that enables the regulation of internal body temperature
Vertebrate: animals with a spine