James Cook University Subject Handbook - 2004

Offerings
View how EA2120 is offered in 2004

(Also shows pre-requisites and inadmissible combinations if applicable)

EA2120:03

Palaeontology and Stratigraphy

[Offered in odd-numbered years commencing in 2005]

Townsville

HECS Band 2

24 hours lectures, 36 hours practicals. Semester 1.

Staff:

Professor R Henderson.

An extended introduction to the fossil record in relation to biosphere evolution through deep time and change in past environments with an outline of how fossils are used to interpret and date sedimentary rock systems in which they occur. The subject concentrates on fossil marine invertebrates and includes treatment of: completeness of the fossil record, palaeonenvironmental and palaeobiological interpretation of fossil remains and broadscale evolutionary and extinction patterns through time and their interpretation. An introduction to stratigraphy provides a conceptual framework for evaluation of sequence in sedimentary rock systems, based on their layered properties and fossil contents and the interpretation of stratigraphic patterns in terms of past environments.

Learning Objectives:

provision of a conceptual framework for the evaluation of biosphere patterns through deep time, based on the fossil record;

the recognition and interpretation of common fossil categories and assemblages as indicators of past biological systems and of episodes in Earth history;

the methodologies for analysis of sedimentary rock systems to determine their age properties coded by sequence and fossil contents;

the provision of a conceptual framework for interpretation of sedimentary rock systems as broadscale indicators of past environmental succession.

Assessment by end-of-semester examination (50%); practical work (40%); essay (10%).