PALEONTOLOGY SERIES
Global Change, Mass Extinctions, and Biodiversity in the Fossil Record
Professor William B. Gallagher

This course is co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, located at 33rd and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia. The entrance for the course is at the east end of the building, next to the garage.

LECTURES WILL BE HELD FROM 10:15 to 11:45 AM

1. Saturday, January 30, 2010 - Introduction to the Geologic Time Scale
   How fossils tell geologic time. Extinctions and radiations: the large scale pattern of the fossil record.
2. Saturday, February 6, 2010 - Earth’s Environments and Geologic Change
   Paleoecology and paleoclimates. Icehouse and greenhouse planetary states. Links to sea level change.

3. Saturday, February 13, 2010 - Paleogeology and Plate Tectonics
   Drifting continents and disappearing oceans. How continental drift helps drive diversification. Volcanism as a possible cause of mass extinction. Flood basalts.

4. Saturday, February 20, 2010 - Early Life History
   Atmospheric evolution. Early diversifications: the Ediacara biota. Late Precambrian/Vendian extinction? The Cambrian Explosion and the Cambrian Fauna.

5. Saturday, February 27, 2010 - Ordovician Diversifications
   The Paleozoic Fauna: The beginnings of the coral reef ecosystem. End - Ordovician mass extinction. Glaciation in Gondwana.
6. Saturday, March 6, 2010 - Middle Paleozoic Diversity Rebound
   

   The Late Devonian Frasnian-Famennian mass extinction; gradual or sudden?

7. Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Late Paleozoic Developments
   Atmospheric oxygen and the life of the coal swamps. The biggest drop of all time: the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. Volcanic greenhouse?

8. Saturday, March 20, 2010 - Dawn of the Age of the Dinosaurs
   Triassic diversifications. The Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction - step-wise or catastrophic? CAMP; volcanic cause? Or impact?

9. Saturday, March 27, 2010 - Dinosaurs Rule the Greenhouse World
   The K/Pg boundary mass extinction: a case study in the methodology of science.

10. Saturday, April 3, 2010 - The Pleistocene Ice Ages
    The Pleistocene megafauna extinction. Portents for the environmental future. 

Statistical studies have identified at least five major intervals of large biodiversity decline in the fossil record of organic origin. There are several probable environmental causes for these biotic crises, all of which have bearing on current concerns about global climate change, environmental deterioration, and biodiversity decline. This course will consider the linkages between environmental change and biodiversity fluctuations by studying the geologic record of mass extinctions.

Recommended reading:

T. rex and the Crater of Doom. By Walter Alvarez. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1997.

Mass Extinctions and their Aftermath. By Anthony Hallam and P.B. Wignall. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1997.

Close Window