Berkshire OLLI - W102: Islands in Deep Time

W102| Islands in Deep Time

Wednesdays

11:30 am - 1:00 pm

3/24, 3/31, 4/7, 4/14, 4/21 & 4/28

Six Sessions

This course is offered online via the easy-to-use Zoom program.

Far back in time, whole islands have been buried and lost, only to be exhumed in more recent times. Together we will explore entire archipelagos which date from the Cambrian Period (500 million years ago) to the last interglacial epoch (only 125,000 years ago.) We begin our tour in Natural Bridge State Park in North Adams, and proceed across the country to the Baraboo Archipelago of Cambrian Wisconsin and then the Black Hills Of North Dakota. Subsequent outings will take us to Hudson Bay, Baja California, China, and various Indian and North Atlantic Ocean Islands. If we grasp the fragility of island ecosystems from the past, we should be able to understand the predicament of an over-extended planet Earth on life support.

Markes Johnson is a Charles Macmillan Professor of Natural Science Emeritus at Williams College; BA at U. of Iowa, Ph.D in Paleoecology U. of Chicago 1977. Since 2009, he has contributed to studies regarding the Miocene to Pleistocene history of many North Atlantic Islands.

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OLLI: the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College
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