Paleontology is the study of fossils. A fossil is defined as any trace of a past life form. Although most of the fossils that paleontologists study are several thousands to several billions of years old, there is no absolute minimum age for a biological structure to be a fossil. Paleontologists study these fossils and attempt to use them to reconstruct the history of the Earth and the life on it. Click here to find out more about paleontology.
Some paleontologists do study the fossil record of humans and their relatives.
However, paleontology as a whole encompasses all life, from bacteria to whales. Paleontology does not usually deal with artifacts made by humans. However, archaeologists and paleontologists might work together. First of all, a number of natural resources are in fact fossils, or derived from fossils. Some paleontologists work for the petroleum industry, and use fossils to interpret sequences of sedimentary rocks.