Welcome to Palaeoecosystems!

This term’s teaching aims to equip you to conduct an independent palaeoecological research project. This will allow you to develop skills that will come in useful as you write your dissertation next year.

The lectures and practicals will teach you to reconstruct ancient environments from the communities that lived in them. We will consider the ecological factors that shape living communities, the preservational factors that shape their fossilised relics, and the methods of interpretation available for reconstructing the past. We’ll also look at how ecological factors have shaped the large-scale evolutionary trends behind the diversification of life on Earth.

The keystone assessment is a short report, in the style of a scientific paper, with the title Community structure, environment and primary ecological controls on the Wenlock Limestone fauna.

What is palaeoecology?
Term overview
Assessment

What is palaeoecology?

Palaeoecology is the study of ancient ecosystems. This raises the question of what we mean by an 'ecosystem'…

Once you've proposed your own definition of an ecosystem, see what you think of mine. Are we on the same page?

Reconstructing ancient ecosystems complements inferrences we might draw from the rock record. The composition and constitution reflects the environments in which organisms live. By measuring the properties of ecosystems, we can reconstruct ancient environments, and how life responds to changes in them.

Note: Throughout the course, viewing embedded videos in Panopto (click the ) will give you the richest experience.

Term overview

An overview of what we’ll cover this term

Each week we’ll cover a principle or theme that helps us to understand what ecology is, how it can be inferred from fossil assemblages, and how the processes of preservation can distort our view of original living communities. This will help us to form evidence-based reconstructions of ancient environments.

The key themes we'll tackle are:

  • 1: Palaeoecology
  • 2: Succession: how ecosystems mature
  • 3, 4: Classification: identifying and quanitfying diversity
  • 5: Taphonomy: how fossils preserve
  • 6: Functional morphology: reconstructing fossil lifestyles
  • 7: Ichnology: reconstructing behaviour from trace fossils
  • 8: Applied palaeoecology: case studies
  • 9, 10: Macroecology: driving macroevolutionary trends

The course is not designed only to improve your palaeontological knowledge; I hope to also help you develop some wider research and communication skills that will be useful in the future – both when writing dissertations, and when professionally employed.

Key skills you’ll develop:

  • Data collection and interpretation
  • Critical analysis
  • Communication of insights
  • Independent scientific research

The first four weeks will aim to develop general and specific research skills, introducing you to specific palaeoecological techniques, their use and their interpretation. In weeks 5–10 you will become increasingly independent, with a focus on conducting and interpreting your own research.

Delivery

How the content will be taught

Flipped classroom

This module employs a "flipped classroom" approach. You will complete a task – usually watching lecture videos or reading papers – before each week's face-to-face session. The classroom sessions will build on this preparatory work with practical exercises and question–and–answer sessions.

Each Q & A session will start with topics raised on the discussion board. As you work through the lecture content, open a topic on the discussion board – anonymously if you wish – when you either have a question of your own, or a question about one of the exercises embedded alongside the content. This will help us to focus the Q & A sessions on topics that will be useful to everyone.

Independent learning

I believe that students learn best when treated as responsible adults. To this end, I expect you to take responsibility for managing your own learning – making the best use of teaching staff during the face-to-face sessions. I won’t remind you of deadlines: copy them into your calendar now, set up the necessary phone or e-mail notifications, and if you don't understand what's expected, ask in good time.

Assessment

This half of the module will be assessed through the 'Wenlock Assignment', a research project that you will write up as a mini-dissertation.

The Wenlock assignment will give you the opportunity to reconstruct life in the Silurian oceans under what is today the Welsh borderlands. You will work in a group to examine a sample of the celebrated Wenlock limestone, before bringing your data together into a class dataset to unleash mega statistical power. Your own observations, documented in a lab notebook, will allow you to address a controversy regarding the deposition of this fossiliferous deposit, and your report will be valuable experience to prepare you for writing your own dissertation next year.

Let’s get started

Before the first face-to-face session, you need to:

  • Refresh your memories of the major fossil groups. You should be able to recognize and briefly describe the lifestyle of ammonites, trilobites, crinoids, graptolites, bivalves and brachiopods, bryozoans, corals and sponges.
  • If you didn't take A-level geology or GEOL1101, then Rigby & Milsom's Fossils at a Glance will bring you up to speed; see reading list for access.

At the end of each page in the course you'll find links to:

Where there's space to write notes, you can save these using the Print to PDF button.