I was very fortunate this semester to have such a fine class of paleoecologists. This course broadly covers the Earth’s ecological history, so it consists of principles, theories and processes illuminated with case studies, all strung along the thread of geological time. I thus depend on the students to bring in lots of questions and their own research on special topics. This class was brilliant with thee happy tasks. Part of the charm was how many disciplinary majors were represented, from the Earth Sciences through Archaeology and Biology. The above class photo was taken at the end of our last class, which was devoted to student research presentations.
We also had the final lab session in the afternoon. We had many lab projects, but the most challenging has been our analyses of the Upper Ordovician fossils we collected in the first week of classes.
Here is one of the student trays near completion of preparation, identification and labeling.
And our delightful (and very quiet) class mascot was Feather, the companion and service dog for Elise. He is so well trained that there were days I didn’t even know he was present!
A delightful class. I miss them already.
Editor’s addition: Turns out this was my last Paleoecology class. I’m retiring from the College in August 2024. It was a great run of paleo teaching for me — 43 years!
