About the course: The course description in the college
catalog includes:
A study of vertebrate structure in relation to phylogeny, ontogeny, and function, emphasizing morphological adaptation for function. The laboratory investigation compares the detailed anatomy of a fish (shark), an amphibian (necturus), and a mammal (cat).
Prerequisites, Biology 1112, Math 0001 or 0003, Math 0002 or 0004.
This is a 4-credit course.
The prerequisites are there to
assure that anatomy students have had a prior course in biology containing a
sound introduction to the structure of organisms, and that they meet the
college-wide math proficiency requirement (which is required of all higher
level courses in our department).
There's a good deal of structure
to be learned in this course, and a lot of Latin terminology. The course must,
after all, prepare students to be comfortable with the way vertebrates are
built, the way anatomists work, and the language anatomists use. They ought to
be prepared to go on to graduate programs in anatomy. All of it is put into the
context of the way vertebrate animals live (and how they lived in the past). In
some cases we use our study of modern vertebrates to help understand
evolutionary history, and in other cases we show how prior knowledge of
evolutionary history can help us to make sense of confusing anatomical data --
one field of science helps another.
In addition, a fair chunk of class
time is spent examining how vertebrates use the structures we learn about. For
example, how birds fly, how fish swim, or how a hawk can see a mouse from 2000
feet in the air. The individual topics vary from year to year, but the course
puts a heavy functional emphasis to the study of anatomy.
As for the human component, humans
are perfectly good vertebrate animals, so we don't ignore them. Humans are
perhaps the most frequent "extra" example in class. Those who go on
to professional schools, (e.g. medicine, dentistry, physical therapy) find
themselves well prepared to survive the rigors of the dreaded Gross Anatomy
Course they encounter there.
Texts & lab supplies
required: