| Credits | 1 |
| Restrictions | No 2025 |
| Pre-Requisites | |
| Co-Requisites | GEOL-190L |
| Core Area | |
| Area of Inquiry | Natural Sciences & Mathematics |
| Liberal Arts Practices | Confront Collective Challenges The Process of Writing |
| Recommended | For students interested in concentrating in geology or environmental geology. |
Explores our planet's 4.5-billion year history and how geologists unearth the past through examination of minerals, rocks, and fossils. Earth's evolution is a natural experiment that cannot be reproduced, and students make use of primary observational and interpretative tools that geologists use to understand the past. Age-dating techniques, plate tectonics and origin of continental crust, mountain building events, and evolution of Earth's landscape, atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere are examined in the context of the geological evolution of North America.