Welcome to the Frontier

This section of the course aims to develop the critical analysis and communication skills that characterize effective thinkers.

By visiting the forefront of the discipline, we'll get to grips with the open palaeontological controversies that are exercising current researchers, and enter the frontier territory where there are no "right answers"!

Objectives

You and your group will construct a "microsite" that takes a side in a current palaeontological controversy, which you will present orally to your peers. [Rubric]

You will then write an essay that argues for the opposing view to one of your peers' microsites. [Rubric]

Your site must therefore provide its audience with a complete introduction to the subject, so that other students can appreciate the key arguments. You will need to pre-empt the counter-arguments to your chosen position!

You will learn to engage critically with the primary literature as we address current controversies as a class. For each of these two subjects, an informal "primer" seminar will introduce key background concepts (week 1), before we split into groups to discuss a key paper at the centre of the controversy (week 2), then find and read further papers to debate one side of the argument (week 3).

Credit: BBC
Credit: BBC

Frontier Topic Selection

A selection of current controversies that might excite your attention.

Origins

  1. When did flowers evolve?
  2. What did Ediacarans eat?
  3. Did oxygen allow life to get complex?
  4. Were there Precambrian sponges?
  5. Do chemical biomarkers reaveal non-fossilizable taxa?
  6. A late or early origin for eukaryotes?
  7. How ecologically "modern" was the Cambrian fauna?
  8. Where are the Cambrian Bryozoans?
  9. Did the "Ediacara biota" survive into the Cambrian?
  10. Was it easy for life to colonize the land?

Patterns & processes

  1. What really did in the dinosaurs?
  2. Did humans or climate change extinguish the Pleistocene megafauna in the Sahul?
  3. Does the fossil record tell us anything meaningful about biodiversity through time?
  4. Can the geological record constrain climate change?
  5. Was the “Mesozoic Marine Revolution” real?
  6. Were mass extinctions fast or slow?
  7. Are we in the midst of a "mass" extinction?
  8. Do trilobites have a hidden history?

Problematica

  1. Is Dickinsonia an Ediacaran animal?
  2. How derived is Namacalathus?
  3. Hyoliths: Brachiopods or molluscs?
  4. Halkieriids: Brachiopods or molluscs?
  5. Is Linnean taxonomy obselete?
Credit: PxHere

Group sign-up

Sign your name against a topic that interests you. There should be one group of three to four students for each topic.