Steven Holland and his graduate students have been engaged in a multi-year study of a Jurassic epicontinental seaway in western North America, known as the Sundance Seaway. This project presents an opportunity to understand an epicontinental seaway in its entirety, from its formation to its final filling with sediments, and to understand that history in terms of subsidence mechanisms, sequence stratigraphic architecture, biogeography, and community ecology. His lab has recently published papers on this project in the Journal of Sedimentary Research, Palaios, and Palaeontology, with several more in the works. This summer, Steve taught a summer field course with Mark Patzkowsky on stratigraphic paleobiology, which focuses on the application of sequence stratigraphic principles to paleobiology and biostratigraphy. The two-week course, based in the Tobacco Root Mountains and the Missouri Breaks of Montana, attracted a dozen students from around the world. This year's course focused on the stratigraphy of mass extinction. Caption: Students and instructors of the Stratigraphic Paleobiology field course.
