Category Archives: Uncategorized

The last week! Good luck finishing your research papers (due FRIDAY, 12/7, 7:30 a.m., Dropbox) and getting ready for next week’s final examination (Monday, 12/10, noon to 2:00 p.m.). Now on to our last topics: Graptolites are disparate, fussy, and … Continue reading →

The Phylum Echinodermata continued! Please see the links for last week. Your final two quizzes (#11 and #12) will be “superquizzes” with lots of extra credit. Quiz #11 will be fill-in-the-blank questions from the first half of the course (through … Continue reading →

The Phylum Echinodermata is upon us. These organisms could be from Mars if we didn’t know better. You will first want to visit the fantastic echinoderm page of the Tree of Life Project. (Friend of the department Bill Ausich of … Continue reading →

The Phylum Arthropoda is extraordinarily diverse. These are the animals that will inherit the world, if they haven’t already. Let’s first visit the wonderful and arthropod-rich Burgess Shale, courtesy of the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation. (Eight years ago I had … Continue reading →

Remember that we have no or lab on Tuesday because I am at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Indianapolis. I’ll be giving this talk on Wednesday afternoon. Wish me luck. We’ll spend Thursday in class reviewing … Continue reading →

One lecture this week because of your test on Thursday. Apparently the minor molluscan groups the scaphopods and rostroconchs haven’t caught on enough in the public consciousness to produce many webpages, so Wikipedia will do fine.  Ron Shimek has a … Continue reading →

The Tree of Life Project has an excellent page on cephalopods; it concentrates on their systematics, but also has good information on cephalopod biology. The Smithsonian has a cephalopod page for professionals and others interested in these creatures. The Wikipedia … Continue reading →

We’ll start with a small fossil group recently placed among the lophophorates: the hyoliths. It is fitting to cover the hyoliths right after our other lophophorates, the brachiopods and bryozoans. Whether lophophorates are monophyletic or polyphyletic is currently debated. Here … Continue reading →

Bryozoans! Everyone’s favorite fossils. When I took this course my professor mumbled at the start of this section, “I hate bryozoans. When I find them, and no one’s looking, I smash them with my hammer!” Bad form. I hope you … Continue reading →

Please see the text and links in last week’s web entry. You’ll all learn soon that there are problems with homeomorphy among brachiopods. (A product of evolutionary convergence.) The linked paper provides one example of many. Remember that many brachiopod … Continue reading →