Not quite.
In paleontology, its either writing papers (legit or not, mostly legit) or, describing fossils.
Papers vary, but typically their content is describing what species/family/phylla/etc a creature belongs to, guessing at a size, investigating feeding habits, etc. (For example in a recent study, those therein studied a bunch of white shark skeletons to develop a vertebrae-to-size-ratio and then applied it to megladon)
A fossil description is where a paleontologist looks at a given fossil, and formally and scientifically describes it (it has these bones it in this condition, we think it was [x] age, died in [x] way, etc.)
The problem with paleontology, is that at the end of the day, its guesswork. Talented and educated guesswork maybe, but guesswork. When you account for the fact that most fossils consist of very few bones (that previously mentioned spino fossil is like 20 bones of 200 some total), and that there is no flesh, the discipline of paleontology is a lot more guesswork than they're willing to admit. Things change so often, not because the field is full of hacks, but becuase its just a bunch of educated guesses. What complicates things is that dinosaurs have no real living analogs; even crocodiles are more distant cousins than anything close. Whereas we can look at elephants to get an idea as to how mammoths may have lived, or modern day monitor lizards to understand how megalainia may have lived, we have nothing to guess at dinosaurs.
Studying the field, i can confirm.
For example, i've been reading about fossil brittle stars since a few days, more specifically those belonging to the Euryalida family. These ones are known nowadays mostly for their fancy ass branching arms they use to filter the surrounding water, and if you see that, you'd assume that fossil generas likely had a similar arms and ecology. However, as it turns out, Triassic fossils of the genera are very VERY different ; they're basically dwarf little brittle stars that actually look more like the Ophiurida, their sister family.
Now take this, and apply it to basically every conceivable fossil group in existence. There's some things that obviously won't change too much (ex: you can expect the average brittle star to not be a gigantic terrestrial superpredator) but most of it is guesswork because of how little usually remains. Some generas are only described on fragments of bones (especially older ones), and some groups such as fossil mammals are notorious for only being described on the basis of teeth and shit. Even some better preserved whole fossils like those found in Cambrian shales might just be vague imprints of a soft-bodied animals that resemble nothing known today and force paleontologists to autistically analyse millimetric details to try to figure out just what the fuck it may be... when it doesn't turn out to be a straight up pseudofossil. I remember reading a paper about lichen-like terrestrial life forms that turned out to be complete fucking bullshit because the guy was making random asspulls based on vague traces found on old rocks. Even in the fairly good brittle star paper i'm reading, the paleontologist straight up tries to establish a classification system for fossil brittle stars on solely ARM SCALES, which are a very insignificant part of the animal occasionally found amongst microfossils.
It gets even worse with plants. Several very widespread generas, especially those based on foliage such as Pecopteris, Sphenopteris, Brachyophyllum and all are so poorly defined that they are basically only valuable as wastebasket "FORM GENERAS" ; basically, they vaguely describe a kind of leaf shape, which doesn't sound too bad until you realize that a shit ton of different plants might have borne such foliage, sometimes even from wildly different clades. Same applies to a LOT of different fossil plants, which are actually mostly just different PARTS that sometimes paleontologists find connected or can assume were part of the same plant.
Sometimes they're lucky enough to find whole plants, but at other times they end up describing generas that are basically useless. Hell, there's even generas of fossil SPORES AND POLLEN ; i don't think i need to tell you how worthless they are, especially when some like Classopollis can be basically summed up as being vaguely the kind of pollen produced by an entire family of conifers. You can occasionally also get a similar thing with like Ammonite beaks, fish scales or even teeth sometimes.
There's two examples of that i remember from fossil wood.
One genera turned out to actually be a trunk... of a plant that still exists today. The other (Xenoxylon) is a genera of fossil wood that has a very complicated history... because nobody knows what the fuck it is. It SEEMS to be associated with leaf fossils belonging to the Miroviaceae, but the two have never been found connected, and while they are found in vaguely similar areas, we've got no fucking idea what the Miroviaceae even really are because they have no modern-day counterparts.
It gets even worse when you consider similar issues often arise with plants AND animals that are twice as old and look again nothing like anything we know of.
To sum it up, paleontology is basically having to reconstitute a puzzle by only knowing what wood was used for the puzzle pieces and that a cat is in there somewhere. It's not entirely bullshit since you can get some pretty good hints from the geological context and some often overlooked details (and sometimes you might just get lucky and find whole puzzle pieces) but you're bound to have to make assumptions somewhere at some point. Fossil generas and species are less like those of modern animals, and more like snapshots of an animal at X point in time. Hell, sometimes paleontologists even end up finding fossils that are actually representing uniquely fucked up individuals, like that one hadrosaur (dinosaur) that had a fucked up face because of an illness.
For example, after analyzing the tiny brittle stars i mentioned earlier, the researchers actually discovered that despite their very small size (which would make you assume they're juveniles), the proportions and growth patterns of the scales showed that these were actually adults, and the genera seems to have just been paedomorphic.
