Paleontology is the monumental study of the history of life on Earth (like archaeology), which is reflected in the fossils record. Fossils are the remains or traces of organisms (fungi, plants, bacteria, animals and other single-celled living things), which are preserved in the crust of the Earth and lived in the geological past.

The purpose of petroleum geologists is to find traps or accumulations of petroleum. The trap not only must be defined but must exist where other conditions such as source and reservoir rocks occur. To locate these traps, the geologist must rely on subsurface information and data gathered by drilling exploratory wells and data obtained by geophysical surveying.

The course in geochemical analysis introduces the student to sampling statistics and its application to problems such as sampling design for geochemical surveys, to some of the special problems of sample preparation with geological samples, and to a wide variety of instrumental methods of analysis which are available to the geochemist, including the various types of spectrophotometry, mass spectrometry, chromatography, x-ray methods, and electrochemical methods.