The objective of this course is to give an overview of the importance of the fossil record to our current understanding of plant evolution. This will include learning about fossil preservation, as well as the geological setting and history of the particular fossil localities that have provided us with the most important information.
Paleobotany is today a diverse and dynamic field of study .
It includes a wide range of approaches to a number of questions regarding the nature of plant life and its history on earth. My own background is that of a classically trained botanist, and my research is primarily taxonomically descriptive and morphologically comparative in approach. I have also had opportunities to study Paleozoic and Mesozoic plants of a variety of groups, so I will draw on my own research topics in some cases as examples. This semester we will run this course a little differently than we have in the past. First, we will change the order of presentation.