Your term paper should describe the world's flora and fauna for a geological period; you must choose a period that is Devonian or younger, because you are expected to describe land as well as ocean biota. You may not choose the Recent.

A good place to start is 'setting the stage', i.e. give the plate tectonic reconstruction of your world (e.g., how many continents? where were they?), followed by a description of the climate of the world. A good place to get the first information on both these topics is the website 'PALEOMAP' by Christopher Scotese. Another good source is 'Global Earth History' (Northern Arizona University). Short overview write ups on the various periods in earth history are available at the Berkeley web site.

Your term paper should include the following:

• What were the most common, largest, or otherwise dominent organisms on land and in the oceans ? For the present world I would want to see insects, birds and mammals mentioned under the land animals and flowering plants under land plants; boney fish, crustaceans and molluscs including bivalves and snails for the oceans, as well as diatoms and calcareous nannnoplankton as primary producers in the oceans.
• How did the ecosystems work? How did global diversity compare with that of the present world? What were the main primary producers on land and in the oceans? What lifestyles were most common on land and in the oceans? How does that compare with the present ecosystems? Example: the many insects living on flowers could only have evolved when flowers evolved; that lifestyle thus was not possible earlier in earth history.

As a rule of thumb, I expect about 10 pages of text, excluding possible figures and tables, and excluding references. Figures are appreciated.

Use standard scientific referencing: refer in text to (name, year) or number the references, and append a reference list (alphabetical or numbered) at the end.