In a universe born there’s 15 billion years old, our Earth, old of 4.5 billion years, is only a dust lost in space, hung on to its star, the sun. Since it appeared on the surface of the earth, there are over 3.5 billion years, life has continued to grow and adapt to different environments, in an extraordinary profusion of biodiversity. During geological times, the process of evolution saw appearing an infinity of life forms, plants and animals. Some were trapped and preserved in rock in formation. Through the exchange of minerals, the remains or impression of the animal or plant are transformed in stone.

It’s with these disparate materials, some huge, the others microscopic, than the men made paleontology, the science which studies the past lives, at first in a concern of classification following Carl Von Linné, father of the modern taxonomy. The aim was to understand the sequence of the disappeared worlds, of dating the fossiliferous layers, which contain them, and to become aware with Georges-Louis Leclerc, count of Buffon, of the immensity of geological times and gradually bring the human mind to approach the most favorable adventure of the universe: the saga of the evolution of species. Evolution that a singular naturalist Charles Darwin anchored forever in the humanity with the certainty that we are the fruit of the nature, the chance and the necessity.