FROM MEMORIZATION TO INSPIRATION: HANDS-ON APPROACHES TO TEACHING PALEONTOLOGY

For most of the twentieth century, paleontology instruction focused on memorization of taxa, morphology, and stratigraphic ranges. Consequently, paleontology got the reputation as a boring, stagnant, musty old field with this “idiographic” approach that focused on details at the expense of the broader implications. The “Paleobiology Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s has slowly begun to affect paleontological pedagogy. New generations of paleontologists who were weaned on the 1972 Raup and Stanley textbook (which had no systematic coverage of invertebrates) have adopted a more dynamic, “law-like” or “nomothetic” approach. The emphasis on ideas, concepts, and controversies over memorization of names and dates makes paleontology far more interesting and relevant to most geology majors (who will not become paleontologists, and will not need huge numbers of names to do their jobs). However, paleontology instructors must still include basic information about the major phyla of fossils or else the theoretical ideas lack any reference in reality. My own approach mixes both theoretical and systematic concepts, with lectures on major topics (taphonomy, ontogeny, population variation, speciation, micro and macroevolution, extinction, paleoecology, biogeography, functional morphology) alternating with lectures supplementing the labs. These outline the basics of each phylum (with much use of video footage of living invertebrates in action). I threw out the memorization of my traditional labs 20 years ago. Now each hands-on lab focuses on solving some sort of realistic problem using the phylum we covered that week. These problems include paleobathymetry of benthic forams, ontogeny in olenellid trilobites, population variation in a large sample of brachiopods, paleoecology of local Miocene molluscan beds, plus dissection of clams, squids, snails, sea stars, and sea urchins. Consequently, my paleontology class has always been very popular (even though it is only an elective), and I’ve sent quite a few students on to grad school in paleontology over the past decade (some converted from other fields of geology, or from biology).