This course considers within an environmental context the evolution
of life on Earth from its origin to the present. Lectures, discussion exercises and debates, a
web-based project, and a field trip will enable us to explore the link between dramatic physical (tectonic),
climatic, and evolutionary events that occurred on our planet in the past 4.5 billion years, including the
origin of life on Earth (and possibly elsewhere), the Cambrian "explosion", the transition to life on land,
and the influence of meteorite impacts, volcanism, and climate on mass extinctions. As a final
theme of the course, a perspective on primates will allow students to prepare presentations about
controversies concerning human evolution in Africa as well as the role that Homo sapiens
may have played in recent extinctions. Understanding the Earth's past will enable us to forecast
the future diversity of life on a human-dominated planet.
