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The last week! Good luck finishing your research papers (due 12/7, 7:30 a.m., Dropbox) and getting ready for next week’s final examination (12/11, 7-10 p.m.). Now, on to our last topics: Graptolites are disparate, fussy, and a bit strange, but … Continue reading →

The Phylum Echinodermata continued! Please see the links for last week. Your final two quizzes (#11 and #12) will be “superquizzes” with lots of extra credit. Quiz #11 will be fill-in-the-blank questions from the first half of the course (through … Continue reading →

The Phylum Echinodermata is upon us. These organisms could be from Mars if we didn’t know better. You will first want to visit the fantastic echinoderm page of the Tree of Life Project. (Friend of the department Bill Ausich of … Continue reading →

This week we continue our work with the magnificent arthropods. Please review the links from last week. Remember that your Essay #2 is due in your Dropbox folder by 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, November 14. Your field studies report is … Continue reading →

We’ll spend Tuesday talking about scaphopods, rostroconchs, bivalves, and the hyolithids. Please review the past links. On Thursday we’ll have an introduction to the arthropods. The Phylum Arthropoda is extraordinarily diverse. These are the animals that will inherit the world, … Continue reading →

The Wikipedia pages on bivalves and oysters are good, and there is a Wooster touch on each. Here is a nice webpage with some simple anatomical diagrams of bivalves. (A useful page for our dissections in lab this week.) Don’t … Continue reading →

Please see last week’s web discussion of the magnificent cephalopods. Apparently the minor molluscan groups the scaphopods and rostroconchs haven’t caught on enough in the public consciousness to produce many webpages, so Wikipedia will do fine.  Ron Shimek has a … Continue reading →

Creatures with brains (more or less) are upon us! The polyplacophorans and monoplacophorans are usually covered early in a mollusk series because they have the least derived characters. Not much online about them for us. Gastropods, though, have their web … Continue reading →

Bryozoans! Everyone’s favorite fossils. When I took this course my professor mumbled at the start of this section, “I hate bryozoans. When I find them, and no one’s looking, I smash them with my hammer!” Bad form. I hope you … Continue reading →

Please see the text and links in last week’s web entry. You’ll all learn soon that there are problems with homeomorphy among brachiopods. (A product of evolutionary convergence.) The linked paper provides one example of many. Remember that many brachiopod … Continue reading →