  Despite having entered the era of "precision cosmology," the formation of
galaxies within the favored CDM cosmological paradigm remains problematic. By
relating our N-body/smooth particle hydro-dynamical simulation to an extensive
range of Galactic and extragalactic observations, we shed light on the
formation and evolution of the Milky Way and other late type galaxies. In light
of recent observations of the stellar populations of extragalactic thick disks,
we examine the proposal that the thick disk formed in a high redshift period
characterized by gas rich merging. We show such a scenario to be consistent
with color observations. We then follow the evolution of structural parameters
of the subsequently formed disk galaxy, from redshift ~1 to the present.
Consistent with observation, little evolution in the ratio of scale-height to
scale-length is found in our simulated galaxy, despite its somewhat chaotic
origins. The simulated galaxy in this report forms part of a larger study of a
suite of galaxies, with which these issues are to be studied in detail.
