Table of Contents
Turn Left in Bismarck, and Go Until…
Relax! We Have New Labs for That
Fieldwork Across the Curriculum:
Update on ISEI
Letter from James Costopoulos '83
Turn Left in Bismarck, and Go Until…
This Summerterm classroom is located in North Dakota, and it doesn’t have a roof.
By Liz Johnston ’03
From left, Tim Bouchard ’03, Pembroke, N.H.; Graham Davies ’04, Malvern, Pa; Ed Cavallerano ’03, Sudbury, Mass.; and Matt Bartkiewicz ’05, Amesbury, Mass., pose in the North Dakota Badlands with the upper half of an eight-foot-diameter, 55-million-year-old petrified stump of Metasequoia, ancestor to the Dawn Redwood tree found in China today. The students found the stump rooted in the clay bed from which they were hoping to excavate fossil crocodile bones during last summer’s course “Almost Digging Dinosaurs,” led by Chapin Professor of Geology Mark Erickson. “Field courses add another dimension to academics at SLU,” says Chapin Professor of Geology Mark Erickson, who has led a Summerterm course, Almost Digging Dinosaurs, in North Dakota’s Badlands three times since 1995.
Erickson describes his course as an introduction to vertebrate paleontology, in which students spend a month during the summer looking for and excavating fossils and learning techniques of fossil preparation. The group spends about half the time camping out and exploring in the field, and the other half working in the North Dakota Heritage Center, where they learn how to clean and prepare the fossils they have discovered.
