COURSE DESCRIPTION

An introductory course designed to introduce the student to the science of paleontology. Emphasis of the course is on how fossils are interpreted and how they contribute to our understanding of Earth history and ancient environments. The course will focus on the fossil-record of major groups of organisms and will cover such aspects as their organic evolution, biogeography, and paleoecology.

No college-level science-background is needed.

Lecture, lab. Required field-trips will be scheduled. 4 credit-hours.

(The above is mostly from the Undergraduate Catalogue.)

SYLLABUS

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH AT THE TOP OF THIS WEB-PAGE

The photograph at the top of this web-page is of the ammonoid cephalopod Discoscaphites gulosus (Morton, 1834) from the Maastrichtian Stage (Upper Cretaceous), Fox Hills Formation, South Dakota. This copyrighted photograph was published as the frontispiece in the book Landman, Neil H., Kazushige Tanabe, and Richard Arnold Davis, 1996, Ammonoid Paleobiology: Plenum Press, New York, xxiv + 857 p.

The photographer was J. Beckett. The image is image 45282 of the American Museum of Natural History, which holds the copyright.

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23 August 2008