Understanding life: finding clues in the fossil record

This course is a wide-ranging look at evolution and the history of life, using evidence from the fossil record. Fossils may form in a variety of ways and sometimes soft tissues can be preserved in surprising detail. Exciting finds continue to be made, and new methods of investigation, such as the use of medical imaging techniques, can reveal aspects of ancient life previously unavailable. We will see how fossils and the rocks that contain them can be used to reconstruct not only the organisms themselves but the environments they lived in, and how these changed through time.

One of the sessions will cover natural selection, a process crucial to understanding biological evolution and we will discuss how new species originate.

The course will provide you with an overview of major events in the history of life, such as the Cambrian Explosion, when many different groups of animals make their first appearance in the fossil record about 540 million years ago. Another aspect covered will be mass extinctions and their causes. For example, did a meteorite really wipe out the dinosaurs, ammonites and many other groups at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago?

There will be a chance to study some real fossils put out in the teaching room, and questions will be encouraged throughout. We will finish by briefly discussing remaining mysteries and how life might evolve in the future.