Most Recent Lecture

Back to the Present, and the Future

Friday, April 26th, 13:25 - 02:15 PM, GY 447

The pattern of glacial-interglacial cycles; Oxygen isotope proxies for climate; Regional differences in paleoenvironmental change; Late Quaternary extinction and the role of humans; Current changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature; Comparison with past; Certainties and uncertainties from a geological and paleontological perspective.

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Indiana Fossils

Heterotrypa ulrichi

The bryozoan Heterotrypa ulrichi from the Ordovician of Indiana.

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Technical terms

regolith

a layer of unconsolidated sediment covering the surface, often composed of clasts derived from the underlying rock. Sometimes the term regolith is restricted to only dry, abiotic accumulations, such as are found on the surface of the moon, but often the term is used more generally to include soils and alluvium.

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Hoosier paleontologists

Edgar Roscoe Cumings

Edgar Roscoe Cumings was a long-time chair of the Geology Department of Indiana University from 1904 to 1942. He arrived at IU in 1898, after doing graduate work at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He later took a leave of absence to obtain his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1903. He and his students studied the paleontology of Indiana and began building the IU Paleontology Collection in earnest. Cumings notably led work on the Cincinnatian (Late Ordovician) of Indiana, the Silurian reefs in the northern part of the state, and on the fauna of the Salem Limestone. Cumings was originally from Ohio and was married to Frances L. Cumings, originally of Pennsylvanian. They had two children, Edith K. and Edgar C. Cumings.

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