introductory historical geology course for both majors and non-majors

near end of course

Investigate the relationship between sea-level change and fossil distributions in deep time.

Explore changes in biodiversity through time in different groups of animals.

Investigate the relationship between tectonics and faunal migration

Identification of potential biases in the fossil record

Diversity curve interpretation.
Synthesis of geographic and faunal data.

Graphing in Excel.
Map and graph interpretation.
Downloading and using online data.

Students download diversity data from the PBDB for Veneridae and Hippuritoida bivalves and plot diversity curves in Excel to illustrate the rapid diversification of these bivalves and the timing of extinction of Hippuritoida. This portion of the lab reinforces concepts discussed in class such as origination and extinction. Students use the mapping software contained in the PBDB to plot distributions of bivalves for the Devonian, Cretaceous and Pleistocene and consider their relationship to changes in sea-level.
Animal migration is illustrated using ungulate and horse fossil distributions. For example, students create maps that plot the location of horse fossils in the Oligocene, Middle Miocene, Late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene. By doing so, students are able to constrain the timing of the formation of the Panama land bridge. This exercise reinforces the importance of the relationship between continental configuration and animal migration over geologic time scales.

Lab activities are graded.