Course Description
The ecological factors affecting the distribution and abundance of fossil organisms, with emphasis on marine invertebrates. Invertebrates as a guide to environments of the past and as indicators of environmental change. Taphonomy of invertebrates.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Preparation and presentation of a term paper.
Athena Title
Paleoecology
Prerequisite
[GEOL 1260-1260L or (GEOL 1122 and GEOL 1122L) or (GEOL 1122H and GEOL 1122L) and GEOL 4010-4010L] or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This is an upper-level lecture/lab class focused on conservation paleobiology, where the fossil record is used to inform citizens/students about how fossil and/or death assemblages of modern organisms provide us a window into how ecosystems have changed over long or very short periods of time and the causes/consequences of such change. For example, conservation paleobiology can be used to reconstruct the past flow of the Colorado River before it was dammed and provides data on historical shifting ecosystem baselines. We also examine biotic diversification, extinctions and recovery from extinctions, with discussions on the current extinction wave of large mammals, birds, insects, and the environmental repercussions of these extinctions; based on the record, we also discuss potential solutions to such issues. This includes a review of ocean acidification over Earth’s history and which organisms are the most susceptible to dissolution and extinction and how long it takes for them to recover, if at all. Additionally, we examine how fossil records form in terrestrial to deep-sea ecosystems and how these biotic deposits are used to interpret geologic time, changing environments and climates from local to global scales. We further examine populations, communities, and species diversity and learn several metrics for how to measure/study biodiversity and paleobiodiversity through time. This class requires a field project, and in the past, we studied live and dead oyster community structure around Sapelo Island to understand how exposure to storms, sea level rise, and other factors affect oyster body size and species composition around the island.
Topical Outline
I. History of Paleoecology II. What is Paleoecology? III. Species and Species Sampling IV. Populations in Paleoecology V. Distribution of Organisms; size-frequency distributions; natural history observations; organism-sediment relations; traces as indicators of organisms. This is followed by a field trip to Sapelo Island gathering the aforementioned data. VI. Biomineralization and Skeletal Structure VII. Functional Morphology; Does Form indicate Function? VIII. Ichnology and Slab Lab IX. Taphonomy: The Quality of the Fossil Record X. Ecosystems and Communities XI. Biotic Interactions: Predatator-Prey relations; Shell Repair; drilling records XII. Biotic Interactions: overgrowth relations XIII. Scientific conference