Vertebrate Geobiology is the application of biological principles and fossils to the study of earth history. This course covers vertebrate morphology, phylogeny, taxonomy, evolution, biomechanics, biogeography, and paleoenvironments, and stratigraphic history, with lab practicals that focus on osteology, functional interpretation, phylogenetic reconstruction, functional morphometrics, scanning, and analysis of data sets.
[Course Syllabus]
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Tetrapod trackways in Indiana, the Carboniferous coal rainforests, tetrapod ecological and phylogenetic diversity in the Carboniferous, changes in tetrapod diversity at the Moscovian-Kasimovian boundary, structure of the class.
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Fossilization, vertebrate depositional environments, taphonomy, collecting ethics, laws on collecting fossil vertebrates.
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Osteology of mammals, homology and evolution, homologies in early tetrapod limbs, HOX genes and regionalization, evolution of regions in amniotes, homology and analogy.
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Bone structure and growth, osteons, histology of fossil bone, growth in dinosaurs, stable isotopes in vertebrate tissues, structure of collagen, hydrogen isotopes and trophic level.
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Major functions of the skull, bones of the skull, development and major components of the skull, cranial nerves, openings of the skull.
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Comparative analysis of selected amniote skulls, temporal fenestrae, the concept of synapomorphy, the role of synapomorphy in phylogeny reconstruction, relation of classification to phylogeny.
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Structures of the mammalian skull associated with jaw movement and mastication, muscles of mastication, metabolism, diet, and body size, features of carnivore, herbivore, granivore, omnivore, and insectivore dietary specializations in mammals.
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Evolutionary transformations in the skeleton, evolutionary mechanisms, scales of selection, evolutionary constraints, quantitative versus qualitative analysis
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Functional morphology of locomotion, limb proportions, balance, lever mechanics, locomotor categories, assessing T. rex.
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Interpreting trees, phylogenetic methods, character polarization, character states, character mapping, outgroup criterion, parsimony
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Global geological time scale, regional and local time scales, correlation, biotic events and biostratigraphic terms, North American Land Mammal Ages, European Mein Zones, ghost lineages, stratophenetics, stratocladistics, and stratolikelihood
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Origin of vertebrates, major groups of "fishes", synapomorphies of different fish groups, timing of origins.
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Origin of tetrapods, early tetrapod phylogeny, biological challenges to life on land, evolution of the forelimb, evolution of the middle ear, synapsid phylogeny, Permo-Triassic extinction
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Mesozoic geography of NA; reptile phylogeny, including turtles, icthyosaurs, sauropterygia, archosaurs, crurotarsi, and dinosaurs; archosaur skull osteology, hadrosaur chewing
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Relationships of birds to theropods, bird diversity, phylogeny of birds, toothless birds, bird evolution, mammalian diversity, relationship to synapsids, phylogeny of mammals, mesozoic mammal groups.
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The bolide impact theory for the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, alternative explanations, evidence from terrestrial mammals, orders of eutherian mammals, tribosphenic teeth and dentitions, evolution of whales
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Modern global climate patterns, Paleogene continents and climate patterns, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), mammal migrations, ecometrics, Titanoboa, reptile paleothermometer, implication for Paleocene temperature gradients.
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Definitions of biogeography, mechanisms of evolution, phyletic change versus speciation, stabilizing and directional selection, drift, role of biogeography in speciation, vicariance and dispersal, South American mammal examples, ecometric biogeography and hypsodonty, habitat modelling, rattlesnake and hyena examples.
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Adaptive radiations, key innovations, adaptation, diversity, disparity, including definitions and methods associated with each topics. Examples from mammal teeth, bird locomotion.
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Vertebrate fossils by region in North America, the Quaternary, glacial-interglacial cycles, Indiana bedrock and surficial geology, Indiana physiography, Indiana vertebrate diversity, changes in biomes and mammals during glacial-interglacial cycles, Late Pleistocene extinctions, population dynamics of extinctions, anthropogenic influence on Indiana's biomes, local extinctions in Indiana over the last 200 years, local range expansions in Indiana over the last 200 years.
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Evidence for human evolution, Cenozoic milestones of Primate evolution, Euarchonton phylogeny, phylogeny of Hominidae, genetic differences among apes, skeletal indicators of bipedality, diversity of hominin species, australopiths, Homo, Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis, H. sapiens, archaeological time periods, spread of H. sapiens over last glacial cycle, population and environment, continuation of Late Pleistocene extinctions.
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Vertebrate evolution has unfolded over time. This lab refamiliarizes you with major groups of vertebrates and when they lived as a prelude to learning vertebrate osteology in detail in the next few labs. Objectives: to map the vertebrate exhibits at IU onto vertebrate phylogeny and the geological time scale.
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This lab familiarizes you with the vertebrate postcranial skeleton. Objectives: to learn the bones of the postcranial skeleton in mammals, to learn anatomical directions, to learn detailed structures of the limb bones, and to compare postcranial skeletons across a diversity of living vertebrates.
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This lab familiarizes you with the bones of the skull. Objectives: to learn the bones of the skull in reptiles, birds and mammals and to observe features of the mandible, ear, and occipital condyles.
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This lab familiarizes you with teeth and mandibles in the context of dietary inference, species diagnosis, and estimation of body size. Objectives: to learn mammalian tooth types and molar morphology, to infer diets from the structure of teeth and skulls, to estimate body mass based on comparative measurements of the dentition, and to distinguish closely related species.
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This lab introduces funcational analysis of the locomotor system. Objectives: to learn identify features of the skeleton associated with different locomotor specializations, to understand limb segment proportions and their relation to locomotion, to calculate basic mechanical indices of the limb.
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This lab introduces you to phylogenetic tree construction using parsimony. Objectives: to learn how to calculate tree lengths and consistency indices, to build a character matrix in Mesquite, to run a parsimony analysis in PHYLIP, and to build and analyze a data matrix of your own for selected amniotes.
[Download handout] [Tetrapod skull illustrations] [Consensus trees]
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This lab introduces you to practical geometric morphometric analysis. Objectives: to learn to install and use yet more brilliant but annoying software, to use ImageJ to collect landmark coordinates from Osteostracan fish, to import those coordinates into MorphoJ and do a standard geometric morphometric shape analysis.
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This lab introduces you to studying vertebrate osteology using MicroCT scan data. Objectives: to learn the layout of the DigiMorph CT site from University of Texas, to orient slices through vertebrate specimens, to recognize bones and make interpretations about anatomy from CT slices.
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This lab introduces you to working with fossil mammals. Objectives: to review tooth morphology, to practice identifying the position of fossil teeth in the tooth row and determining whether they belong to the left or right side, to familiarize yourself with the diversity of Eocene dentitions, to practice referring fossils to already known species.
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This lab introduces you to ecometrics, the study of the relationship of traits to environments. Objectives: to collect measurements from Primate postcrania related to locomotion, to calculate an ecometric index that relates to locomotor function, and to compare the values of that index for different Primate species that live in different habitats.
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This lab introduces you to practical aspects of the analysis of diversity. Objectives: download stratigraphic range data for vertebrate taxa from the Paleobiology Database; tabulate diversity by stratigraphic time bin, plot diversity curves.
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Paleontology in the News
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