Courses

Dinosaurs  explores how science works and provide practical knowledge about the history of life and how we have come to understand it. We learn how to analyze the evolutionary relationships of organisms and examine how dinosaurs came to be exemplars of a very successful group of organisms dominant on land for 140 million years. We will delve deeply into how direct descendants of small carnivorous theropod dinosaurs evolved into birds, still more diverse than mammals, dominating the air. The Mesozoic, a “hot-house world”, with no ice caps and was the kind of world we are hurtling towards because of our input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we will look at how their time is a natural experiment for our future. The non-avian dinosaur met their end in a remarkable cataclysm discovered by detective work that we will delve deeply into as a paradigm of the scientific method  Finally, they are fun and spectacular - monsters more fantastic than any person has invented in legend or religion - and they are still with us!  

The course examines the modern atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and other components of the Earth’s climate system, and considers how they have changed in the past. Topics include global energy balance, greenhouse gases, thermodynamics of the atmosphere, moisture and clouds, ocean biology, chemistry and physics. The general circulation of the atmosphere as well as the surface and deep ocean will be considered from first principles and modern observations. Multiple intervals of Earth’s past will be considered, including substantially warmer and colder periods than the modern, as well as the repeated oscillations between glaciations and interglacial episodes of the past two million years. Some emphasis will be place on relatively rapid climate changes that have occurred naturally in the past, and the course will conclude with a consideration of recent trends and future projections.