Aims

This course must allow the students to acquire general knowledges in vertebrate paleontology including human paleontology. It constitutes the scientific base - even though it is not strictly a prerequisite - of the general culture course "Evolution and Hominisation" by a more specificly scientific approach of these topics in the field of vertebrates.

Main themes

The course will go over the main steps of vertebrate evolution in the more general perspective of Earth's history; the coming out of the water and the conquest of the continent as well as the adaptations that came from it. Il will be made reference to the stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental contexts in which the evolution steps of vertebrates took place. The phylogenetic links of the main groups of vertebrates will also widely by discussed, by example: their origin, that of amphibians, the actual questions concerning the systematic position of the reptiles, their parental links with birds, mammals and the evolution of the humans. The classical perspective of the questions will be look upon and compared with those, more recent, of the Hennigian cladistic in systematic and the punctuated balances as an evolutionary mode. The course contains a few practical aspects: use of vertebrate faunas as a stratigraphic tool, climatological and paleoecological reconstitutions.

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