Frozen in time, a 125-million-year-old mammal attacking a dinosaur. A 39-million-year-old whale, the heaviest animal that ever lived. The oldest known jellyfish, from 505 million years ago. Paleontology produces newsworthy discoveries.

Fossils, moreover, provide direct evidence for the long history of life, allowing paleontologists to test hypotheses about evolution with data only they provide. They allow investigation of present and past life on Earth, from single-celled microbes to plants and animals (yes, including dinosaurs). Great ebbs and flows of biological diversity, appearances of new life forms and the extinctions of long existing ones, would go undiscovered without these efforts. At a time when instruction in biology can be increasingly reductive and ahistorical, paleontologists teach us the astonishing breadth of past and present life on Earth and the long history that led to today’s biosphere. Learning this long-term historical perspective is as important as studying the gene and the cell.

But the headlines over exciting new fossils, especially new dinosaurs, grossly underestimate the true importance of paleontology. Its real significance lies in how such discoveries illuminate the grand history of life on Earth. From its beginnings, more than three billion years ago, to the present day, fossils record how life adapted or perished in the face of major environmental challenges.

To read the full Scientific American article, click here.