Stones and Bones

Study basic geology (including rocks and minerals, stratigraphy, earth history, and mapping skills), evolutionary biology (including comparative skeletal anatomy of fishes and other freshwater animals, large-scale evolutionary patterns of these animals, and how the 50-million-year-old ecosystem of the Fossil Lake Range was established and functioned), and methods of specimen-based research. This course provides the fundamental scientific background needed to discover and understand the meaning of fossils as they are preserved, and gives students the opportunity to gain actual field experience. Students go “behind the scenes” at the Field Museum to examine previously collected fossils and learn how to prepare, conserve, and analyze specimens. The textbook,Grande, L. 2013. The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time. University of Chicago Press, 440 pp., is available on Amazon.