FIELD STUDIES COURSE STRESSING DINOSAURS MOTIVATES UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS TO LEARN METHODS OF SCIENCE AND PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY

During May of the last three years a 15-day Field Studies Course offered by West Virginia University at Parkersburg has been conducted in western Colorado and eastern Utah stressing dinosaur paleontology. The course has been very successful and students (both science and non-science majors) are strongly motivated by the course to learn general methods of scientific investigation and also other principles of geoscience, including general principles of paleontology, petrology, stratigraphy, and sedimentology. The course may be taken for 1 to 3 semester credit hours. Students that enroll for more than 1 credit hour must complete a research project dealing with some aspect of the paleontology, petrology, stratigraphy, or sedimentology of the field areas studied. One student presented a paper at the 1999 Annual Geological Society of America Meeting summarizing a research project dealing with freshwater bivalves of the Jurassic Morrison Formation of Utah. Two students have submitted abstracts to the 2001 Southeastern Section Annual Meeting of GSA summarizing their past year's projects. The main thrust of the field course is dinosaur paleontology. Stops at museums, dinosaur track sites, and working dinosaur quarries in western Colorado and eastern Utah are part of the itinerary, and allow for discussion of dinosaurs and local geology. Approximately six days are spent camping in the desert on federal land in the San Rafael Swell of Utah while exploring for and/or excavating dinosaur bones (with the proper permits from the BLM). The typical day in the desert includes a lecture and discussion period after breakfast involving some aspect of the geology or paleontology of the study area. This is followed by field work, either exploring for or excavating dinosaur bones or gathering data and rock samples relative to the petrology, stratigraphy, and sedimentology of the outcropping rocks.