Examples of Titles from a Previous Year’s Essay I Assignments

Patterns of Biodiversification in the Paleozoic
Making a Shell:  Different Ways of CaCO3 Shell Formation
Ancient DNA Preserved in the Fossil Record
Cretaceous Climate Change
The Recovery of Ancient DNA and What it Means to Us
What Causes Ice-Age Climate Oscillations?
Factors Contributing to the Decline & Extinction of Trilobites
The Use of Fossils to Prove the Existence of Gondwana
The K-T Mass Extinction
Stable Isotopes of Oxygen in Fossil Remains as Indicators of Ancient Climate
The First Evidence of Life on Earth
Was a "Global Killer" Responsible for the Mass Extinction Among Marine Organisms at the Tr/J Boundary?
A Look at a Few Cambrian Trilobites
Radiation of Thought (Overview of the Cambrian Explosion)
Using the Fossil Record to Characterize the Last Interglacial
Ancient DNA-the Key to Our Past?
Tracing Evolution Through the Fossil Record
What Caused the K-T Extinction?
The Permian - Triassic Extinction
North American Orogenies and Their Effects on Trilobite Species
Effects of Vulcanism on Paleoclimate
Experiments of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey & Evolution of Multicellular Life
Coral Reef Cycles
The Importance of Konservation Lagerstatten and Archaeopteryx
Coral Reef Extinctions
The Cryptic Conodont as a Tool for Geology
DNA and the Key to Unlocking Man's Link to the Neanderthal
Effects of Past and Present Global Warming
La Brea Tar Pits
Ammonite Extinction versus Nautilus Survival
What Keys Do We Use to Unlock the Door to Paleoclimate?
Causes for Mass Extinction of Trilobites
Dinoflagellate Cysts: Recreating the Past
The Chicxulub Impact Event as the Cause of Mass Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous
The Separation of South America and Africa
Human Ancestry
The Benefits of the Use of Echinoderm Ossicles in Paleontological Research
Coral Extinctions in the Permian
Cretaceous/Tertiary Extinctions