Paleontologists are among the more colorful and eccentric figures in the history of science. Important figures include the Englishman William Smith who first noted that similar fossil sequences were found regionally and Georges Cuvier who initiated the study of ancient animals based on living animals. Notable American figures include Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, Paul Sereno, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Louis Agassiz, Charles Walcott, and Roy Chapman Andrews. Notable European paleontologists include the Swedish-speaking Finn Björn Kurtén, Czech paleoentomologist Jarmila Kukalova-Peck, and French Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Franz Nopcsa von Felsö-Szilvás is often credited for being the founder of palaeobiology, a field of inquiry dealing with the biological and ecological functions that can be deduced from fossils. South African John T. Robinson discovered the nearly complete fossil skull of Austalopithecus africanus.

History includes a number of prominent paleontologists. Charles Darwin collected fossils of South American mammals during his trip on the Beagle and examined petrified forests in Patagonia. Thomas Jefferson took a keen interest in mammoth bones. Besides looking at mammal teeth and digging up penguins, George Gaylord Simpson played a crucial role in bringing together ideas from biology, paleontology, and genetics to help create the "Modern Synthesis" of evolutionary biology; his book "Tempo and Mode" is a classic in the field. Prominent names in invertebrate paleontology include Steven Stanley, Stephen Jay Gould, David Raup, Geerat Vermeij, and Jack Sepkoski who have done much to expand our understanding of long-term patterns in the evolution of life on earth. The same is the case with Croatian scientist Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger and his discovery of the "Krapina Man".

Other paleontologists include Yves Coppens. More modern figures in paleontology include John Ostrom, Bob Bakker, David B. Weishampel and Jack Horner.