Cooper Curtice was an assistant to C. D. Walcott from 1883-1886. In 1885, he spent four months, mostly in Alabama, measuring sections of Paleozoic rocks and searching for fossils, mainly in the Cambrian. In 1888, Walcott concurred with foreign authorities that the rocks called Middle Cambrian in North America were Early Cambrian in age and vice versa, requiring a new interpretation of Cambrian strata. Curtice returned to Alabama for geologic investigations in 1892, and again briefly with Walcott in 1895. Since that time Cambrian stratigraphy in the southeastern United States has remained virtually unchanged.