The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the principles of geology, help you understand how Earth systems function, and how these systems affect humans (and other life) in positive and negative ways. It is my goal that when you finish this course you will have a greater understanding and appreciation for the complexity and beauty of the natural world, you will be a more scientifically literate citizen and voter, and you will be prepared to make informed decisions to improve the quality of life for yourself and others.

The purpose of the Geology of the MU Columns course is to utilize the iconic (and ionic) symbol of the University to explore the fundamental concepts of Earth history, including deep time, changes in environmental conditions and organisms through time, the nature of the geologic record, and the geologic history of Missouri.

Humans are having an undeniable influence on Earth systems, including the biosphere. Climate change, habitat destruction, over-hunting/harvesting, pollution, and invasive species are among the primary stressors of modern biodiversity. How have ecosystems responded to such stressors in the past? How do we determine what a “pristine” ecosystem looks like when planning ecosystem restoration? Paleontologists are uniquely equipped to address these questions using the fossil record. In this course we will review the important questions in this emerging discipline, learn about the tools used to address these questions, and learn from case studies involving invertebrate, vertebrate, and plant fossils from a variety of environments.

The purpose of this course is to help you become proficient in a broad range of quantitative methods currently used to address important questions in paleobiology. We will accomplish this goal through a combination of lecture, practical application, and reading/discussion of classic and current literature. I will introduce you to quantitative methods during lecture, starting with basic statistics and moving to more advanced procedures and ordinations. We will also learn the basics of R freeware. It is my goal that you will be able to use these activities to analyze data for your thesis/dissertation and thereby make progress along two fronts with this course. Most weeks we will have a student-led discussion of a student-selected peer-reviewed paper where we will critique the manuscript paying special attention to the quantitative methods used (or not used as the case may be).

The purpose of this course is for you to proceed from an introduction to proficiency in both common statistical methods and their implementation in R, an open source programming language and environment for a variety statistical and graphical packages. We will accomplish this goal through a combination of lectures and practical activities. Our goal is for you to become sufficiently familiar with resources available in R that you can customize these tools for your own research and streamline the processes of appropriate data analysis, interpretation, and effective presentation.

The purpose of this course is to explore current and classic literature pertaining to a broad range of paleontological topics including taphonomy, paleoecology, macroecology, evolutionary morphology, biostratigraphy, diversity, origination, extinction, biotic interactions, conservation paleobiology, and stratigraphic paleobiology in the context of varied taxonomic groups.