In paleontology

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

, a zombie taxon (plural zombie taxa) or the zombie effect refers to a fossil such as a dinosaur tooth that was washed out of sediments and re-deposited in rocks and/or sediments millions of years younger. This basic mistake in the interpretation of the age of the fossil leads to its title. The discovered fossil was at some point mobile (or "walking") while the original animal or plant had long been dead. When this occurs the fossil is described as a "reworked fossil".

See also

• Convergent evolution
  Convergent evolution
  Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are...
  
  
• Extinction
  Extinction
  In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
  
  
• Elvis taxon
  Elvis taxon
  In paleontology, an Elvis taxon is a taxon which has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution...
  
  
• Lazarus taxon
  Lazarus taxon
  In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon is a taxon that disappears from one or more periods of the fossil record, only to appear again later. The term refers to the account in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead...
  
  
• Living fossil
  Living fossil
  Living fossil is an informal term for any living species which appears similar to a species otherwise only known from fossils and which has no close living relatives, or a group of organisms which have long fossil records...
  
  

Further reading

• Weishampel, David B. et al. (2004). The Dinosauria. University of California Press. ISBN 0520242092.
• Archibald, J. David. (1996). Dinosaur Extinction and the End of An Era. Columbia University Press, 672-684. ISBN 0231076258.
• Abigail Lane et al. "Estimating paleodiversities: a test of the taxic and phylogenetic methods", who defined the term.