Chronological Order: Telling Time with Utah’s Fossil Record
Featured speaker Evey Gannaway Dalton, PhD, geoscientist
Assistant Professor, Department of Geosciences, Utah State University
Date
Friday, October 6, 2023
7 p.m. Eccles Science Learning Center,
Emert Auditorium, Room ESLC 130
Hands-on learning activities and refreshments follow the talk in the Eccles Science Learning Center atrium.
Admission is free and all ages are welcome.
Directions and Parking Information
Talk Description
One … two … three …. Four: How do we know how old something is? USU geoscientist Evey Gannaway Dalton says the principle of fossil succession is fundamental to our understanding of the relative age of different rocks. The geologic timescale itself, she says, was first established and constructed based upon this principle – all of our major time periods (eons, eras, periods, etc.) in Earth’s history are differentiated by the presence or absence of given fossils. “And as I tell my students, it is in fact this principle that is evidence for the theory of evolution,” says Gannaway Dalton, “As it is essentially evolution ‘trapped’ in the rock record.”