There is an urgent need for research that leads to reconstruction of Earth's past climates and environments. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing paleontologists is the taxonomic description of the enormous diversity of fossils. Unless fossils are well identified, few reliable conclusions can be drawn from them. Recent estimates of the number of species on Earth at present vary from 3 to 80 million, of which about 1.5 million have been described. If the fossil record is taken into consideration, the number of species increase dramatically.
Taxonomic studies are of crucial importance to understanding biodiversity .
All these exciting directions are paths that can be pursued through the study of paleontology. To enter paleontology a four-year undergraduate program followed by a M.Sc. is the minimum requirement. Students would normally take courses in the main geological subjects such as stratigraphy and sedimentology as well as in biology. Paleontology is usually available in geology programs and locally, advanced courses may be offered in the undergraduate program. Most paleontologists have doctoral degrees in which they complete a thesis on a particular specialty, usually certain kinds of organisms from a specified period of geological time.