The major subdivisions of paleontology include paleozoology (animals), paleobotany (plants), and micropaleontology (microfossils). Paleozoologists may specialize in invertebrate paleontology, which deals with animals without backbones, or in vertebrate paleontology, dealing with fossils of animals with backbones, including fossil hominids (paleoanthropology). Micropaleontologists study microscopic fossils, including organic-walled microfossils whose study is called palynology.

There are many developing specialties such as paleoecology, paleobotany, ichnology (the study of tracks and burrows) and taphonomy, the study of what happens to organisms after they expire.

Major areas of study include the correlation of rock strata with their geologic ages and the study of evolution of lifeforms. Paleontology utilizes the same classic binomial nomenclature scheme devised for the biology of living things by the mid 18th century Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus and increasingly sets these species in a genealogical framework, showing their degrees of interrelatedness using the still somewhat controversial technique of "cladistics".