Learn the history of life in a dramatic new way with this fascinating course that draws upon biology, earth science, and other disciplines to explain life's mysterious origins.
Overview
Syllabus
- By This Professor
- 01: The Interconnected Earth
- 02: The Vast Depths of Earth Time
- 03: Fossil Clocks
- 04: Paleontologists as Detectives
- 05: The Shifting Surface of Planet Earth
- 06: Earliest Origins-Formation of the Planet
- 07: Origins of Land, Ocean, and Air
- 08: The Early Chemical Evolution of Life
- 09: Hints of the First Life Forms
- 10: How Life Transformed the Early Earth
- 11: Snowball Earth-Another Crisis
- 12: Metazoans-Life Grows Up
- 13: Incredible Variety-The Cambrian Explosion
- 14: Window to a Lost World-The Burgess Shale
- 15: The Forgotten Fossils in Earth's Story
- 16: Introduction to the Great Mass Extinctions
- 17: The Collapse of Earth's First Eden
- 18: Making the Break for Land
- 19: Getting a Backbone-The Story of Vertebrates
- 20: The Evolution of Jaws
- 21: These Limbs Were Made for Walking?
- 22: Tiktaalik-The Search for a Fishapod
- 23: Carboniferous Giants and Coal
- 24: Amniotes-The Shape of Things to Come
- 25: Permian Extinction-Life's Worst Catastrophe
- 26: Finding the Killer-The Greenhouse Earth
- 27: The Dinosaurs Take Over
- 28: Letting the Dinosaurs Speak-Paleobehavior
- 29: Conquering the Air-The Evolution of Flight
- 30: Monsters of the Deep-Mesozoic Oceans
- 31: The Cretaceous Earth-A Tropical Planet
- 32: The Sky Is Falling-End of the Dinosaurs
- 33: The Collision of North and South America
- 34: The Rise of Mammals and the Last Ice Age
- 35: The Humble Origins of Human Beings
- 36: The Conscious Earth
Taught by
Stuart Sutherland
