DOCSLIB.ORG

Yale College Programs of Study 2015–2016

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Yale College Programs of Study 2015–2016 Contents Key to Course Listings 6 Building Abbreviations 7 Yale College Calendar with Pertinent Deadlines 8 Yale College Administrative Officers 12 Final Examination Schedules 14 Subject Abbreviations 15 A Message from the Dean of Yale College 17 I. Yale College 18 The Undergraduate Curriculum 18 Distributional Requirements 19 Major Programs 22 The Residential Colleges 23 International Experience 24 Yale Summer Session 25 Special Programs 26 Honors 31 Miscellaneous 32 II. Academic Regulations 33 A. Requirements for the B.A. or B.S. Degree 33 B. Grades 40 C. Course Credits and Course Loads 44 D. Promotion and Good Standing 46 E. Registration and Enrollment in Courses 47 F. Withdrawal from Courses 50 G. Reading Period and Final Examination Period 52 H. Completion of Course Work 54 I. Academic Penalties and Restrictions 58 J. Leave of Absence, Withdrawal, and Reinstatement 59 K. Special Arrangements 65 L. Transfer Students 75 M. Eli Whitney Students Program 77 N. Nondegree Students Program 79 O. Credit from Other Universities 81 P. Acceleration Policies 84 Q. Amendments 89 III. Subjects of Instruction 90 Majors in Yale College 90 Accounting 92 Aerospace Studies 92 African American Studies 94 African Studies 99 American Studies 107 Anthropology 118 Applied Mathematics 129 Applied Physics 134 Archaeological Studies 137 Architecture 143 Art 150 Astronomy 160 Biology 166 Biomedical Engineering 167 British Studies 172 Chemical Engineering 173 Chemistry 178 Child Study Center 190 Classics 192 Cognitive Science 202 College Seminars 210 Computer Science 210 Computer Science and Mathematics 219 Computer Science and Psychology 220 Computing and the Arts 221 DeVane Lecture Course 224 Directed Studies 224 East Asian Languages and Literatures 225 East Asian Studies 233 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 241 Economics 249 Economics and Mathematics 262 Education Studies 263 Electrical Engineering 265 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 273 Energy Studies 275 Engineering 275 Engineering and Applied Science 276 English Language and Literature 279 Environment 299 Environmental Engineering 299 Environmental Studies 303 Ethics, Politics, and Economics 311 Ethnicity, Race, and Migration 322 Film and Media Studies 333 Forestry and Environmental Studies 342 French 344 Freshman Seminar Program 352 Geology and Geophysics 359 German Studies 369 Germanic Languages and Literatures 369 Global Affairs 377 Global Health Studies 385 Hellenic Studies 393 History 394 History of Art 418 History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health 425 Human Rights 430 Humanities 431 Italian 437 Judaic Studies 442 Latin American Studies 446 Linguistics 455 Literature 464 Mathematics 476 Mathematics and Philosophy 486 Mathematics and Physics 487 Mechanical Engineering 488 Media Theory and History 494 Modern Middle East Studies 495 Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry 501 Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology 507 Music 521 Naval Science 532 Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations 535 Philosophy 544 Physics 551 Physics and Geosciences 560 Physics and Philosophy 561 Political Science 561 Portuguese 579 Psychology 582 Public Health 593 Religious Studies 594 Russian and East European Studies 600 Science 604 Slavic Languages and Literatures 604 Sociology 611 South Asian Studies 620 Southeast Asia Studies 627 Spanish 630 Special Divisional Majors 636 Statistics 639 Study of the City 643 Theater Studies 643 Urban Studies 652 Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 652 The Work of Yale University 662 Index 664 Map of Yale University 670 Key to Course Listings AFAM Course subjects are listed by three- or four-letter abbreviations in capitals. See the complete list of Subject Abbreviations. MATH 112a or b The letters “a” and “b” after a course number denote fall- and spring- term courses, respectively. A course designated “a or b” is the same course given in both terms. Staff Multiple course instructors are commonly listed as “Staff.” Refer to Online Course Information (http://students.yale.edu/oci) for individual section instructors. Prerequisite: Prerequisites and recommendations are listed at the end of the course MATH 112 description. L5, HU Foreign language courses are designated L1 (first term of language study), L2 (second term), L3 (third term), L4 (fourth term), or L5 (beyond the fourth term). Other distributional designations are QR, WR, HU, SC, and SO, representing quantitative reasoning, writing, humanities and arts, science, and social science, respectively. See “Distributional Requirements” under “Requirements for the B.A. or B.S. Degree” (http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/academic-regulations/ requirements-for-ba-bs-degree/) in the Academic Regulations. ½ Course cr Most courses earn one course credit per term; variations are noted. RP A course designated “RP” meets during the reading period. See “Reading Period and Final Examination Period” (http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/ academic-regulations/reading-period-final-examination-period/) in the Academic Regulations. [ASTR 320] Courses in brackets are not offered during the current year but are expected to be given in the succeeding academic year. *HIST 012 A student must obtain the instructor’s permission before taking a course marked by a star. All seminars are starred. ITAL 310/LITR 183 A course with multiple titles, i.e., with two or more departments in the title line, counts toward the major in each department where it appears. TR The abbreviation “TR” denotes a literature course with readings in translation. English: Pre-1900 Lit Courses with department-specific designations are applied toward the requirements of certain majors. See the program descriptions of the relevant majors. HIST 130Jb, MCDB A capital J or L following the course number denotes a History 201Lb departmental seminar or a science laboratory, respectively. Cognitive Science Related courses appear in departments other than their own (e.g., Courses: ECON 159 ECON 159 might be listed under Cognitive Science). Such courses may count toward the major of the relating department. Building Abbreviations AKW Arthur K. Watson Hall LEPH Laboratory of Epidemiology and BASS Bass Center for Molecular and Public Health Structural Biology LFOP Leitner Observatory and BASSLB Bass Library Planetarium BCMM Boyer Center for Molecular LGH Abby and Mitch Leigh Hall Medicine LOM Leet Oliver Memorial Hall BCT Becton Engineering and Applied LORIA Jeffrey H. Loria Center Science Center LUCE Henry R. Luce Hall BK Berkeley College LWR Lanman-Wright Memorial Hall BM Charles W. Bingham Hall MC Morse College BML Brady Memorial Laboratory MEC Malone Engineering Center BR Branford College ML Mason Laboratory BRBL Beinecke Rare Book and OML Osborn Memorial Laboratories Manuscript Library PC Pierson College C Connecticut Hall PH Phelps Hall CC Calhoun College PM Peabody Museum of Natural CRB Class of 1954 Chemistry Research History Building PWG Payne Whitney Gymnasium CSC Child Study Center RDH Rudolph Hall D Durfee Hall RKZ Rosenkranz Hall DAVIES Davies Auditorium, Becton SB Sage Hall Center SCL Sterling Chemistry Laboratory DC Davenport College SDQ Sterling Divinity Quadrangle DL Dunham Laboratory SHM Sterling Hall of Medicine DOW Dow Hall SLB Sterling Law Building EAL Electron Accelerator Laboratory SM Silliman College EM Edwin McClellan Hall SMH Sprague Memorial Hall ES Ezra Stiles College SML Sterling Memorial Library ESC Class of 1954 Environmental SPL Sloane Physics Laboratory Science Center SSS Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona EVANS Edward P. Evans Hall Hall F Farnam Hall STOECK Stoeckel Hall GML Greeley Memorial Laboratory SY Saybrook College GRN Holcombe T. Green, Jr., Hall TAC The Anlyan Center HGS Hall of Graduate Studies TC Trumbull College JE Jonathan Edwards College TD Timothy Dwight College JWG Josiah Willard Gibbs Research UT University Theatre Laboratories V Vanderbilt Hall K Kirtland Hall W Welch Hall KBT Kline Biology Tower WL Wright Laboratory KCL Kline Chemistry Laboratory WL-W Wright Laboratory West KGL Kline Geology Laboratory WLH William L. Harkness Hall KRN Kroon Hall WTS Watson Center L Lawrance Hall YCBA Yale Center for British Art LC Linsly-Chittenden Hall YUAG Yale University Art Gallery Yale College Calendar with Pertinent Deadlines This calendar includes a partial summary of deadlines given in the Academic Regulations (p. 33) and in the Yale College online publication Undergraduate Regulations (http://yalecollege.yale.edu/campus-life/undergraduate-regulations). Unless otherwise specified, references are to sections in the Academic Regulations, and deadlines fall at 5 p.m. Fall Term 2015 Aug. 26 W Residences open to upperclassmen, 9 a.m. Aug. 28 F Residences open to freshmen, 9 a.m. Required registration meetings for freshmen. Sept. 1 T Required registration meetings for upperclassmen. Sept. 2 W Fall-term classes begin, 8:20 a.m. Sept. 4 F Friday classes do not meet; Monday classes meet instead. Sept. 7 M Labor Day; classes do not meet. Sept. 11 F Final deadline to apply for a fall-term Leave of Absence. See Leave of Absence, Withdrawal, and Reinstatement (p. 59). Withdrawal from Yale College on or before this date entitles a student to a full rebate of fall-term tuition. See Undergraduate Regulations. Sept. 16 W Final course schedules due for the Classes of 2018 and 2019.* Sept. 17 TH Final course schedules due for the Classes of 2016 and 2017.* All students planning to complete degree requirements at the end of the fall term must file a petition by this date. See Special Arrangements (p. 68). Sept. 25 F Last day to withdraw from a course offered in the first half of the term without the course appearing on the transcript. See Withdrawal from Courses (p. 50) and Grades (p. 40). Sept. 26 S Withdrawal from Yale College on or before this date entitles a student to a rebate of one-half of fall-term tuition. See Undergraduate Regulations. Oct. 9 F Last day to convert from the Credit/D/Fail option to a letter grade in a course offered in the first half of the term. See Grades (p. 40). Oct. 14 W Deadline to complete applications for financial aid for the 2016 spring term, for students not enrolled in the 2015 fall term. See Undergraduate Regulations.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Yale Earth & Planetary Sciences News
    YALE EARTH & PLANETARY SCIENCES NEWS Yale University I Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences FALL NEWSLETTER 2020 Since our last newsletter (in Chair’s Letter 2018) we have added two new faculty, Assistant Profes- sors Juan Lora and Lidya Dear Friends, Family and Tarhan. Juan studies plan- Alumni of Yale Earth etary atmospheres and & Planetary Sciences, climates, and is one of the principal investigators on the Surely one of the first upcoming NASA Dragonfly things you’ll notice, espe- Mission to the Saturnian moon cially you alumni, is that Juan Lora, Assistant Titan. Titan is one of the big- the department changed Professor gest moons in our solar sys- its name. On July 1, 2020 tem, is the only one with a thick atmosphere made the department went from of mostly nitrogen, and has a methane cycle similar Geology & Geophysics to Earth’s hydrological cycle, which carries water to Earth & Planetary Sci- and heat around our planet. Juan also examines Dave Bercovici ences. This change has how a warming climate on Earth affects water been brewing for decades, transport through atmospheric rivers. through many cycles of discussions, polls, and debates, and was finally Lidya Tarhan works on made official this year. This is not the first time ancient environments, and the department’s name has changed. Yale is one especially how the earliest of the first educational institutions in the country animal life, at and before the to teach the science of the Earth, starting in 1804 time of the Cambrian explo- with a single faculty member, Benjamin Silliman, as sion 540 million years ago, professor of Chemistry and Natural History.
    [Show full text]
  • A NEW METAZOAN from the MIDDLE CAMBRIAN of UTAH and the NATURE of the VETULICOLIA by DEREK E
    [Palaeontology, Vol. 48, Part 4, 2005, pp. 681–686] RAPID COMMUNICATION A NEW METAZOAN FROM THE MIDDLE CAMBRIAN OF UTAH AND THE NATURE OF THE VETULICOLIA by DEREK E. G. BRIGGS*, BRUCES.LIEBERMAN , SUSAN L. HALGEDAHLà and RICHARD D. JARRARDà *Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, PO Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA; e-mail: [email protected] Department of Geology, University of Kansas, 1475 Jayhawk Boulevard, 120 Lindley Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA àDepartment of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, 135 S. 1460 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA Typescript received 22 November 2004; accepted in revised form 24 March 2005 Abstract: A new metazoan, Skeemella clavula gen. et sp. arthropodan in character. The similarity of this fossil nov., is described from the Middle Cambrian Pierson Cove to vetulicolians throws hypotheses of their deuterostome Formation of the Drum Mountains, Utah, USA. Skeemella affinity into question and highlights their problematic sta- is similar to vetulicolians, but differs from other examples tus. of this group in the relative proportions of the anterior and posterior sections, the large number of divisions, and Key words: vetulicolian, Cambrian, deuterostome, arthro- the elongate bifid termination. The posterior section is pod. The very name vetulicolian conjures up creatures from species Banffia confusa, to erect a new class of stem-group another planet. These extraordinary fossils, with a head arthropods, the Vetulicolida. They argued that Banffia shield-like anterior and narrow segmented trunk-like pos- constricta from the Burgess Shale belongs to the same terior, are the latest Cambrian group to be accorded phy- class, extending its range to North America.
    [Show full text]
  • Harry Whittington Dies 94
    Published: 5:58PM BST 08 Aug 2010 Professor Harry Whittington Professor Harry Whittington, who died on June 20 aged 94, was the former Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge and the world’s leading authority on fossil trilobites; in later life he led painstaking research which revealed a “Cambrian explosion” and raised disturbing questions about the proCesses of evolution. Trilobites were hard-carapaced creatures, which thrived, in the Cambrian period, beginning 542 million years ago, until they died out nearly 300 million years later. Very distantly related to horseshoe crabs, they lived in the sea and crawled on land, evolving into more than 20,000 different species, ranging in size from a millimetre to nearly two feet. Many known species are ones which Whittington himself discovered on field trips around the world. Usually it is difficult to extract the fossils from the surrounding rock, but in the 1940s Whittington and his colleague Bill Evitt investigated beds in Virginia where the carapaces of the animals had been replaced by insoluble silica. By throwing samples into acid, they were able to recover thousands of perfect specimens, ranging from fully-grown adults to microscopic larvae. These fossils enabled Whittington, in a series of monographs published in the 1950s and 1960s, to revolutionize what we know about trilobites — how they grew from larva to maturity through successive molts, how they moved and articulated their bodies, and how they evolved and migrated. Later in his career, in 1966, Whittington was invited by the Canadian Geological Society to chair a group commissioned to examine the Burgess Shale deposits discovered by CD Walcott during the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1909.
    [Show full text]
  • THE SYNTHETIC THEORY of EVOLUTION DNA Makes RNA, RNA Makes Protein and Proteins Make Us
    320 Chapter f THE AGE OF MAMMALS The Present is the Key to the Past: HUGH RANCE THE SYNTHETIC THEORY OF EVOLUTION DNA makes RNA, RNA makes protein and proteins make us. —Crick.1 f14 Genes, alleles < deoxyribonucleic acid > ...using the metaphor of computation to describe the role of genes is bad biology, for it implies an internal self-sufficiency of DNA. Even if we had the complete DNA sequence of an organism and unlimited computational power, we could not compute an organism, because an organism does not compute itself from its genes. (In fact, any computer that did as poor a job of computation as a genetic “program” does of an organism would immediately be thrown into the trash.) —Richard Lewontin The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, 2000.2 Mathematical population theorists Ronald Aylmer Fisher (The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, 1930),3 John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (design disparaging: “[He has] an inordinate fondness for beetles.”),4 and Sewall Wright (conceiver of “adaptive landscapes”)5 were the principle forgers, during the period 1920-1950, of the modern theory of population genetics that unites previously warring concepts (Footnote f14.1) of Darwinian natural selection, which is decidedly nonrandom, that guides evolution incrementally (by gradual change) but rapidly by its recursiveness (the output of previous selection is input for subsequent selection), along paths to fitness, and the purely random nature (no inherent directionality, no predictability) of heredity by large sudden changes (saltations, hopeful monsters) that Mendelian rules suggested to some geneticists (principally, typologists William Bateson, Hugo de Vries, and Wilhelm Johannsen).
    [Show full text]
  • A Solution to Darwin's Dilemma: Differential Taphonomy of Ediacaran and Palaeozoic Non-Mineralised Discoidal Fossils
    Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title A Solution to Darwin's Dilemma: Differential Taphonomy of Ediacaran and Palaeozoic Non-Mineralised Discoidal Fossils Author(s) MacGabhann, Breandán Anraoi Publication Date 2012-08-29 Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/3406 Downloaded 2021-09-26T20:57:04Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. A Solution to Darwin’s Dilemma: Differential taphonomy of Palaeozoic and Ediacaran non- mineralised discoidal fossils Volume 1 of 2 Breandán Anraoi MacGabhann Supervisor: Dr. John Murray Earth and Ocean Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, NUI Galway August 2012 Differential taphonomy of Palaeozoic and Ediacaran non-mineralised fossils Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................... ix List of Tables ........................................................................................................... xxi Taxonomic Statement ........................................................................................... xxiii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ xxv Abstract ................................................................................................................. xxix 1. Darwin’s Dilemma ...............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Chasing After a Prehistoric Kite Runner 4 April 2016
    Chasing after a prehistoric Kite Runner 4 April 2016 Researchers from Yale, Oxford, the University of Leicester, and Imperial College London described the new species in a paper published online the week of April 4 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators—attaching them to the limbs, holding them under the carapace, or enclosing them within a special pouch until they are old enough to be released—but this example is unique," said lead author Derek Briggs, Yale's G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. "Nothing is known today that attaches the young by threads to its upper surface." The Kite Runner fossil shows 10 juveniles, at different stages of development, connected to the adult. The researchers interpret this to mean that the adult postponed molting until the juveniles were old enough to hatch; otherwise, the juveniles would Aquilonifer spinosus, the Kite Runner, was an arthropod have been cast aside with the shed exoskeleton. that lived about 430 million years ago. It carried its young in capsules or pouches tethered to its body. The adult specimen's head is eyeless and covered Credit: D. Briggs, D. Siveter, D. Siveter, M. Sutton, D. by a shield-like structure, according to the Legg researchers. It lived on the sea floor during the Silurian period with a variety of other animals including sponges, brachiopods, worms, snails and other mollusks, a sea spider, a horseshoe crab, Scientists have discovered an ancient animal that various shrimp-like creatures, and a sea star.
    [Show full text]
  • Meet Pentecopterus, a New Predator from the Prehistoric Seas 31 August 2015
    Meet Pentecopterus, a new predator from the prehistoric seas 31 August 2015 ancestors of modern spiders, lobsters, and ticks. A detailed description of the animal appears in the Sept. 1 online edition of the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. "This shows that eurypterids evolved some 10 million years earlier than we thought, and the relationship of the new animal to other eurypterids shows that they must have been very diverse during this early time of their evolution, even though they are very rare in the fossil record," said James Lamsdell, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University and lead author of the study. "Pentecopterus is large and predatory, and eurypterids must have been important predators in these early Palaeozoic ecosystems," Lamsdell said. Geologists with the Iowa Geological Survey at the University of Iowa discovered the fossil bed in a meteorite crater by the Upper Iowa River in northeastern Iowa. Fossils were then unearthed and collected by temporarily damming the river in 2010. Researchers from Yale and the University of Iowa have led the analysis. Artist's rendering of Pentecopterus. Credit: Patrick Lynch/Yale University You don't name a sea creature after an ancient Greek warship unless it's built like a predator. That's certainly true of the recently discovered Pentecopterus, a giant sea scorpion with the sleek features of a penteconter, one of the first Greek galley ships. A Yale University research team says Pentecopterus lived 467 million years ago and could grow to nearly six feet, with a long head shield, a narrow body, and large, grasping limbs for trapping prey.
    [Show full text]
  • LETTER Doi:10.1038/Nature09920
    LETTER doi:10.1038/nature09920 A giant Ordovician anomalocaridid Peter Van Roy1,2 & Derek E. G. Briggs1,3 Anomalocaridids, giant lightly sclerotized invertebrate predators, appendage20. Its morphology, however, differs from an anomalocaridid occur in a number of exceptionally preserved early and middle spine20, and its unsegmented, sclerotized nature is inconsistent with an Cambrian (542–501 million years ago) biotas and have come to anterior appendage22. Schinderhannes bartelsi from the Lower symbolize the unfamiliar morphologies displayed by stem organisms Devonian Hunsru¨ck Slate retains some anomalocaridid characters, in faunas of the Burgess Shale type. They are characterized by a pair of including a circular mouth and anterior raptorial appendages, but anterior, segmented appendages, a circlet of plates around the mouth, clearly lies crownward as a sister taxon to the euarthropods5. and an elongate segmented trunk lacking true tergites with a pair of The Fezouata Biota preserves a fully marine Burgess Shale fauna in flexible lateral lobes per segment1,2.Disarticulatedbodyparts,suchas combination with more advanced taxa8,23. The anomalocaridid speci- the anterior appendages and oral circlet, had been assigned to a range mens are associated with a diverse fauna8 and were recovered from five of taxonomic groups—but the discovery of complete specimens from excavations north of Zagora, in southeastern Morocco. Excavations 1 the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale showed that these disparate and 2 are approximately coeval, and sit just below the boundary elements all belong to a single kind of animal3. Phylogenetic analyses between the Lower and Upper Fezouata Formations; they are latest support a position of anomalocaridids in the arthropod stem, as a Tremadocian in age.
    [Show full text]
  • Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction Du Branch Patrimoine De I'edition
    THE BURGESS SHALE: A CAMBRIAN MIRROR FOR MODERN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY by Keynyn Alexandra Ripley Brysse A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology University of Toronto © Copyright by Keynyn Alexandra Ripley Brysse (2008) Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44745-1 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44745-1 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation.
    [Show full text]
  • Adolf Seilacher (1925–2014) Palaeontologist Who Pioneered Analysis of Trace Fossils
    COMMENT OBITUARY Adolf Seilacher (1925–2014) Palaeontologist who pioneered analysis of trace fossils. dolf Seilacher used the simplest of that of a regular sea urchin, to show that not methods — careful observation — every shape has adaptive significance. to transform our understanding of Seilacher’s ability to interpret morphol- Aancient organisms. His interpretations of ogy from first principles is best demon- the enigmatic Ediacara fossils, which date strated by his research on the strange fossils GERBER WOLFGANG from about 578 million years ago, before the of the Ediacaran period, with shapes such as appearance of the major animal phyla during fronds, spindles and discs. He saw in these the Cambrian explosion, explained forms “an exotic principle of organismic construc- found among the earliest large organisms. tion” consisting of quilted chambers that Seilacher also showed how trace fossils — maximize the surface available for feeding those that record biological activity such as and respiration. He assigned the Ediacara the burrowing of marine animals — reveal organisms to an extinct kingdom of life that behavioural traits. He analysed the influ- he called Vendobionta. The relationships of ences that shape invertebrate morphology these organisms remain controversial, but and showed how exceptionally preserved many examples investigated by Seilacher on fossil assemblages (for which he used the Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, Canada, term Lagerstätten) are the result of condi- show a fractal organization that defies easy tions such as low oxygen, rapid burial and assignment to any living group. the effect of microbial films that seal the Among the trace fossils, Seilacher was sediment surface. particularly fascinated by Paleodictyon, a In a career that straddled the Atlantic, regular, often hexagonal, mesh-like structure Seilacher influenced palaeontology as much that is connected to the sediment surface by with his personality as with his publications.
    [Show full text]
  • Sampling the Insects of the Amber Forest COMMENTARY Derek E
    COMMENTARY Sampling the insects of the amber forest COMMENTARY Derek E. G. Briggsa,b,1 Amber, which is fossilized tree resin, is full of surprises. about 320 My old and comes from a Carboniferous The tail of a feathered dinosaur was recently recov- gymnosperm from Illinois (10). Such early amber is ered from mid-Cretaceous (∼99 Ma) amber from mainly a product of extinct seed plants and gymno- Myanmar (1), and anole lizards in Miocene Dominican sperms. Amber from flowering plants appeared in the amber (2) showed that lizard communities have per- middle to late Cretaceous but did not become sisted for at least 16 My. Carnivorous plants of the abundant until the Eocene. The Hymenaea tree is an family Roridulaceae, presently confined to South important source from the Miocene onward. The com- Africa, have been discovered in Eocene amber from position of Hymenaea resin varies depending on the the Baltic (3). The great majority of creatures in amber, species and region of origin (11). Resin functions to however, are insects, and they often preserve the fin- heal wounds suffered by plants and to deter herbivo- est 3D details. A fly and a mite were discovered trapped rous insects, so production is stimulated by physical in a spider web in Early Cretaceous amber from Spain damage and insect attack (9). (4), and a scale insect in mid-Cretaceous Burmese The oldest amber known to contain arthropod amber is associated with eggs and freshly hatched inclusions (a fly and mites) is Triassic in age, about nymphs, showing that brood care in insects dates back 230 My old, and it comes from the Dolomite Alps of at least 100 My (5).
    [Show full text]
  • Awards and Citations Presentation of the 2015 Paleontological Society
    Journal of Paleontology, 91(6), 2017, p. 1337–1338 Copyright © 2017, The Paleontological Society 0022-3360/17/0088-0906 doi: 10.1017/jpa.2017.106 Awards and Citations Presentation of the 2015 Paleontological Society Medal to Derek E. G. Briggs Jakob Vinther School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, BS8 1TH 〈[email protected]〉 Derek Briggs is probably best known to the general public for Among other puzzles, Derek, together with Euan Clarkson, his work on the Burgess Shale, which he carried out as a Ph.D. solved the affinities of the conodont animal, showing that it is a student and afterwards, together with Harry Whittington and chordate. In 1985 Derek moved from Goldsmiths, which is Simon Conway Morris. Their research was popularized by part of the University of London, to the University of Bristol. Stephen J. Gould. The importance of the Cambrian Explosion Realizing that our understanding of how exceptional preserva- that Harry, Derek, and Simon highlighted, aided by Steve tion occurs is poor, he spearheaded the field of experimental Gould’s book, cannot be overstated. Many students, including soft-tissue taphonomy during the 1990s, decaying worms, myself, read Wonderful Life and became interested in evolution, shrimps, birds, and lancelets with the help of postdoc paleontology, and the events that shaped the origins of life. Amanda Kear and a number of Ph.D. students. These experi- While Harry and Simon stole more of the limelight with their ments showed that it is imperative to appreciate a fossil not as a many weird wonders, Derek produced a series of monographs frozen snapshot in time but rather as a corpse: the paleontologist on bivalved arthropods.
    [Show full text]