GEOS 101(F) Earth History and Evolution of Life

Our Earth is a dynamic, ever changing planet with a geologic history stretching back 4.5 billion years. Wandering continents, shifting oceans, the rise and fall of mountains, ice ages, fluctuating sea level, and even crashing asteroids all have their place in this story. The evolution of life on Earth may be read from the rock record as a continuous development of organisms interacting with the environment and one another. Geological concepts of time, cyclicity, catastrophism, and uniformitarianism form the basis for an historical approach to the blooming of the biosphere from Precambrian time to the present. Biological topics considered include: origin of life, explosion of multicellular life, vertebrate evolution, invasion of the land by plants and animals, hot-blooded dinosaurs and their extinction, and mammalian evolution. Using the model of plate tectonics/continental drift as a point of reference, the unfolding spectrum of life may be viewed as a natural sequence of events closely related to on-going changes in the physical world. Lectures three hours per week; one two-hour laboratory per week (some involving field work), plus one all day field trip to the Helderberg Plateau and Catskill Mountains of New York and a half day trip to the Geology Museum at Amherst.

Evaluation will be based on weekly quizzes and lab work, a midterm, and a final exam.

Hour:  M. JOHNSON