COURSE CURRICULUM

In the first year of the BSc (Hons) Palaeontology degree, you will begin by exploring the analysis of the Earth and environment, where you’ll delve into the numerical, chemical, and physical properties of Earth, with a focus on understanding the planet as a global system. You will also study biodiversity and vertebrate anatomy, learning about the diversity of life forms from an evolutionary perspective, especially vertebrates, while examining their origins, anatomy, and fossil preservation. The Earth materials module will take you on a journey through the properties of rocks and minerals, covering their classification, composition, and significance within Earth's crust and mantle. You'll tackle global environmental challenges by analyzing the interrelationship between population trends, resource use, and environmental change. In the How the Earth Works module, you will explore Earth's history, continental drift, the formation of mountain ranges, and the techniques to read geological maps. Additionally, you will engage in sedimentology and palaeontology, learning about sedimentary rock cycles, fossil groups like trilobites and ammonites, and the geological history of the British Isles.In the second year, you will explore early vertebrate evolution, focusing on the fossil records of the transition from water to land and the development of amphibians and reptiles. You’ll learn about early archosaurs like crocodiles and pterosaurs and investigate the origins of limblessness in snakes. The invertebrate and analytical palaeontology module will introduce you to major invertebrate phyla, their body plans, functional morphology, and evolution, alongside learning quantitative analysis methods like cladistics to study fossil groups. You will also delve into micropalaeontology, palaeobotany, and palaeoenvironments, where you'll reconstruct ancient environments using microfossils and study the evolution of plants. In the palaeontological techniques module, you will gain practical skills in extracting, preparing, curating, and illustrating fossils, including using scanning electron microscopes. The professional skills for palaeontologists module will provide fieldwork experience, teaching you how to collect field data, produce scientific reports, and consider career paths in palaeontology and geoscience. The sedimentary processes and facies analysis module will broaden your practical and field skills in analyzing how different sedimentary environments form, with an emphasis on interpreting palaeoenvironmental conditions.In the final year, you will embark on a palaeontology study tour, where you'll visit significant fossil sites and museums, participating in fieldwork and lectures about fossil Lagerstätten and taphonomic processes. This will culminate in a group presentation and an individual portfolio. The research project module will allow you to undertake independent research in your chosen area of palaeontology, supported by your academic tutor. You will develop and execute a research plan, critically analyze your findings, and present them in a dissertation, demonstrating your academic and research abilities.