Fossil Record

Integrated view of the history of life: biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity, evolution by natural selection, ecology, and physiology along a multiplicity of scales from the microbial to the planetary, as recorded in the fossil record. Attention is given to how biotic systems, in contrast to just physical systems, have changed through time maintaining the chemical and thermodynamic non-equilibrium state of the Earth's surface. Two lectures per week; several labs including dissections for paleobiological comparisons and one field trip to fossil localities and museum collections in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Prerequisites: EEPS 0220 or 0230 or 0240 , BIOL 0200 , or instructor permission.