Two hours lecture; Six hours laboratory. Explores how the Earth's solid, fluid, atmospheric, and living systems have evolved and interacted over the immensity of geologic time, and how the rock and fossil records are analyzed to reconstruct the co-evolution of Earth systems and life. Students will examine the origin of the Earth and solar system, birth of the oceans and continents, effects of plate tectonics, and the changing atmosphere and climate through time, as well as biological evolution and classification of important groups of fossils, causes and effects of rapid evolution events, and mass extinctions.