GL 310 PALEOBOTANY

SYLLABUS

DR. R.A. GASTALDO

204 PETRIE HALL

gastara@mail.auburn.edu

Week 1

Perspectives on Late Twentieth Century Paleontological Research Plant

Lecture Notes

Taphonomy: Physiological, Necrological, and Traumatic processes

Lecture Notes


Week 2

Taphonomy: Biogeochemical Processes of Plant Fossilization and Preservational Modes

Lecture Notes

Biostratinomic Processes in Volcaniclastic, Fluvial-Lacustrine, and Coastal Deltaic Terrains

VolcaniclasticLecture Notes

Fluvial-LacustrineLecture Notes

Coastal-DeltaicLecture Notes




Week 3

Biostratinomic Processes in Peat Accumulating and the Nearshore Marine Realm

Peat and CoalLecture Notes

Marginal MarineLecture Notes

Systematics and Evolutionary Processes in the Plant Kingdom

Lecture Notes




Week 4

Monerans and Protoctists; Evolution and Diversification of PreCambrian Life

Lecture Notes

Evolutionary Trends in Non-Vascular Plants: Priming for Land Conquest

Lecture Notes




Week 5

Mid-Paleophytic Evidence for the Acquisition of Land Habit and Tracheophyte Emergence

Lecture Notes

Evolution of Vegetational Tiering and Canopy Diversification

Lecture Notes

Consult the ONLINE Biology Textbook for a review of Plant Anatomy if necessary.



Week 6

The Appearance of Forests and Adaptive Characters for Stressed Environments

Lecture Notes

The Permo-Carboniferous: Diversification Responses to Times of Icehouse-Greenhouse

Lecture Notes


Week 7

Early Mesophytic Global Diversification: A New Fasçade for an Era

Lecture Notes on the "Players"

Lecture Notes on Landscape Vegetation


Week 8

The Cenophytic and the Evolution of Angiospermy: Hypotheses and Conjecture

Lecture Notes

Angiosperm Radiations & Evidence for a Late Cretaceous Terrestrial Extinction Event

Lecture Notes


Week 9

Fossil Plant Remains as Paleoclimatic Indicators

Lecture Notes

Tertiary Community Distribution in Response to Global Climatic Trends

Lecture Notes


TEXTBOOKS

Broadhead, T.W. ed. 1986. Land Plants: Notes for a Short Course. University of Tennessee Department of Geological Sciences Studies in Geology 15:1-212.

Gastaldo, R.A. 1983. Paleobotany Lab Manual: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Auburn University Printing Service. 124p.


LIBRARY RESERVE READINGS

All materials are available in the Haley Center Laboratory

Committee on the Conduct of Science, National Science Foundation, 1989. On Being a Scientist. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 22p.

Gastaldo, R.A. 1992. Taphonomic considerations for plant evolutionary investigations. Palaeobotanist 41:211-223.

Gastaldo, R.A. 1994. The genesis and sedimentation of phytoclasts with examples from coastal environments in A. Traverse, ed. Sedimentation of Organic Particles. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7, pp. 103-127.

Traverse, A. 1988. Plant Evolution Dances to a Different Beat. Historical Geology 1:277-301.

Schopf, J.W. 1993. Microfossils of the Early Archean Apex Chert: New Evidence of the Antiquity of Life. Science. 260:640-646

Knoll, A.H. 1992. The early evolution of eukaryotic organisms: a geological perspective. Science 256:673-678.

Retallack, G.J. 1992. What to call early plant formations on land. PALAIOS 7:508-520.

DiMichele, W.A. 1995. Ecolgical patterns in time and space. Paleobiology 20:89-92.

Gastaldo, R.A., DiMichele, W.A., and Pfefferkorn, H.W. 1996. Out of the Icehouse into the Greenhouse: A Late Paleozoic Analog for Modern Global Vegetational Change. GSA Today 6(10):1-7.

Retallack, G.J. 1997. Neogene Expansion of the North American Prairie. PALAIOS 12:380-390.