Course no. 1520. Program contains thirty-six lectures; the length of each lecture is approximately 30 minutes. Course guidebook includes professor biography, course scope note, lecture guides, geologic time, and bibliography. Course guidebook Includes bibliographical references, pages 250-257. Professor Stuart Sutherland, the University of British Columbia, lecturer.
Contents:
Lecture 36. The conscious Earth. Lecture 2. The vast depths of Earth time -- Lecture 3. Fossil clocks -- Lecture 4. Paleontologists as detectives -- Lecture 5. The shifting surface of a planet Earth -- Lecture 6. Earliest origins -- formation of the planet -- Lecture 7. Origins of land, ocean, and air -- Lecture 8. The early chemical evolution of life -- Lecture 9. Hints of the first life forms -- Lecture 10. How life transformed the early Earth -- Lecture 11. Snowball Earth -- another crisis -- Lecture 12. Metazoans -- life grows up -- Lecture 13. Incredible variety -- the Cambrian explosion -- Lecture 14. Window to a lost world -- the Burgess Shale -- Lecture 15. The forgotten fossils in Earth's story -- Lecture 16. Introduction to the great mass extinctions -- Lecture 17. The collapse of Earth's first Eden -- Lecture 18. Making the break for land -- Lecture 19. Getting a backbone -- the story of vertebrates -- Lecture 20. The evolution of jaws -- Lecture 21. These limbs were made for walking? -- Lecture 22. Tiktaalik -- the search for a fishapod -- Lecture 23. Carboniferous giants and coal -- Lecture 24. Amniotes -- the shape of things to come -- Lecture 25. Permian extinction -- life's worst catastrophe -- Lecture 26. Finding the killer -- the greenhouse Earth -- Lecture 27. The dinosaurs take over -- Lecture 28. Letting the dinosaurs speak -- Paleobehavior -- Lecture 29. Conquering the air -- the evolution of flight -- Lecture 30. Monsters of the deep -- Mesozoic oceans -- Lecture 31. The Cretaceous Earth -- a tropical planet -- Lecture 32. The sky is falling -- the end of dinosaurs -- Lecture 33. The collision of North and South America -- Lecture 34. The rise of mammals and the last Ice Age -- Lecture 35. The humble origins of human beings -- Lecture 36. The conscious Earth.
Summary:
"Do you like history, perhaps investigating where your family came from or learning what challenges your ancestry met and where they called home? This course traces some of the wanderings of our wider family, the biosphere, from its first appearance on Earth around 4 billion years ago through to the present day. This journey has been a fantastic one, with many interesting twists and turns along the way, many high points and more than a few crises."--Page 1 of course guidebook.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.