The Paleontological Laboratory at SUNY Cortland represents a collection web pages describing the facilities of the paleontology laboratory as well as a listing of resources for current and prospective students and information on several paleontological groups. The paleontology laboratory is maintained by Dr. Christopher McRoberts. You can visit Dr. McRoberts ' home page by clicking here.
Listing of pages (and links) associated with the paleo.cortland.edu server
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Historical Geology (GLY 262) course page [next offered Spring, 2008] |
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Data Analysis in the Natural Sciences (GLY 281) course page [Offered Fall, 2007] |
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Invertebrate Paleontology (GLY 363) course page [next offered Spring, 2008] |
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Supplemental Field Field Studies (GLY 400) course page [Offered Fall, 2007] |
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Stratigraphy (GLY 471) course page [Offered Fall, 2007] |
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History of Geology (GLY 573) course page [Last Offered Fall, 2006] |
The Paleontology laboratory is a modern facility with a variety of teaching and research equipment. The laboratory is amply equipped with binocular and petrographic microscopes. Additionally, the laboratory is equipped fossil preparation equipment including a variety of mechanical preparation tools (e.g., drills, engravers, and air abrasive facilities) and an acid-proccessing facility with fume hood and processing area. Elsewhere in the Department are thin-sectioning and rock-sawing machines, a X-ray diffractometer, and complete darkroom facilities. There are several computers housed within the lab for student use as well as complete ditial photography facility for fossil specimens. Also in the laboratory is the marine tank; a 40 gallon salt water aquarium which houses a wide variety of tropical marine invertebrates including corals, anonomes, crabs, starfish, snails, clams.
Currently the Department of Geology and Paleontology Laboratory maintains a teaching collection of invertebrate, vertebrate and plant fossils numbering more than 10,000 individual specimens. These specimens are used in a variety of courses including Invertebrate Paleontology and Historical Geology. Many of these are featured on the web based paleontology tutorial that accompanies the invertebrate paleontology course.
In addition to the teaching collection, the Paleontology Lab is home to more than 10,000 individual fossil specimens that are used for research purposes. A large portion of this material are fossil invertebrates, mostly marine bivalve molluscs, from the Triassic Period. A significant proportion of the research collection comes from the Alpine region of Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy), England, and from the western part of North and Central America including Alaska, British Columbia, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Sonora Mexico. At any one time, additional fossil material is on loan from other repositories such as the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History.
The Cortland paleoserver is home to the Subcommission on Triassic
Stratigraphy (STS). Under the auspicities of the International Union of
Geological Sciences (IUGS) and International Stratigraphic Commission
(ISC), the STS is charged with the establishment of a standard,
globally applicable stratigraphic scale for the Triassic system.
Click here to go to the STS web pages
The Cortland paleoserver is home to the International Geological
Programme (IGCP) project 458: Triassic-Jurassic boundary events
website. IGCP 458 is led by József Pálfy (Hungarian
Natural History Museum, Budepest Hungary), Stephen Hesselbo (Oxford
University, Oxford, England) and Christopher McRoberts (SUNY
Cortland, Cortland New York, USA). The project is a 5 year
multinational research effort to better understand the biologic
events that took place at the end of the Triassic Period as well as
better document the geophysical, and geochemical changes that occur
at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary and to examine the possible causes
of these changes.
Click here to go to the IGCP 458 web
pages
The Central New York Paleontological Group is an informal
association of paleontologists and students in universities and
museums in central New York
Click here to to the Central New
York Paleontologic Group pages
Cortland's Geology Department Home Page
Site Info: maintaind by C. McRoberts, SUNY Cortland Geology Department
© 1999-2007 SUNY
Cortland Geology Department.
Page created August 17, 1999, modified, August 6, 2006
