Overview

Explore a graduate-level course in paleontology covering major marine invertebrate groups, fossil plants, and essential techniques in the field. Delve into ichnology, fossil preservation, taphonomy, ontogeny, cladistics, biostratigraphy, paleoecology, extinction, and evolutionary rates. Examine the fossil record's quality, specimen description, ontogenetic variation, population sampling, and species naming. Learn to construct cladograms, identify fossils, use them for dating, and interpret ancient marine environments. Investigate fossil communities, catastrophic events, and paleontology's impact on evolutionary studies. Study major life history events, early single-celled life evidence, and the significance of fossil sponges, cnidarians, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, echinoderms, graptolites, trilobites, and other arthropods. Explore ichnology and fossil plants, addressing study challenges and examining fossil algae and fungi. Trace plant colonization of land, Carboniferous forests, horsetails, gymnosperms, cycads, Mesozoic plant diversification, Ginkgo fossils, and using fossil leaves for paleoclimate studies. Investigate Darwin's "Abominable Mystery," angiosperms, and the Green River Formation's fossil plants. Broadcast from Utah State University's Uintah Basin Campus in Vernal, this 14-hour course offers comprehensive insights into invertebrate paleontology and paleobotany.

Syllabus

How good is the fossil record?.
How do you describe a fossil specimen?.
What is ontogenetic variation?.
How do you sample a fossil population?.
How do you name a new fossil species?.
How do you assemble a cladogram or phylogenetic tree using fossils?.
How do you identify a fossil?.
How do you use fossils to tell time?.
How can fossils reveal what the ancient marine environment was like?.
What does a fossil community tell you about the periodcity of catastrophic events?.
How has paleontology revolutionize the study of evolution?.
What are the major events in the history of life?.
What evidence do we have of the earliest single celled life in the fossil record?.
What is so important about fossil sponges?.
What are Cnidarians and what has their fossil record revealed about the history of life?.
What are Fossil Bryozoans?.
What are Brachiopods?.
What are the major groups of fossil Molluscs?.
What does the fossil record reveal about the evolution of Echinoderms?.
What are Fossil Graptolites, and why are they useful in geology?.
What are Trilobites and Other Fossil Arthropods?.
What is Ichnology?.
Why study fossil plants?.
What are some of the problems in studying fossil plants?.
Lecture 28 Fossil Algae.
Lecture 27 Fossil Fungi.
How did plants colonize the land, based on what we know from modern plants?.
How did plants colonize the land, based on the fossil record?.
How did plants become forests during the Carboniferous?.
What is the fossil record of Horsetails?.
How did the first seed plants (the Gymnosperms) evolve?.
How good is the fossil record of Cycads?.
How did gymnosperms diversify during the early Mesozoic to become a modern dominate plant group?.
What is the significance of the fossil record of Ginkgo?.
How can you use fossil leaves to study past climates?.
Has Darwin’s Abominable Mystery been solved?.
What is an Angiosperm?.
The Fossil Plants of the Green River Formation of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado..