Description:
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.
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