Talk: How the Largest of the Largest Dinosaurs Came to Be

The June Draper Museum Lunchtime Expedition focuses on Bighorn Basin paleontology, How the Largest of the Largest Dinosaurs Came to Be, presented by Dr. Michael D’Emic, vertebrate paleontologist and Associate Professor at Adelphi University. Please note that this lecture takes place on the third Thursday of June rather than the first Thursday like most in this series.

The in-person talk takes place in the Center’s Coe Auditorium, with a virtual option available at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cLTx2iaGTNuPev-hin6L8A.

The long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods are by far the biggest land animals ever to walk the earth, rivaled in size only by the largest whales today. What led to the exceptional size of the sauropods? Where, when, and how did their titanic sizes evolve, and how did sauropods grow? And why haven’t other groups of reptiles, mammals, or birds evolved such immense sizes? These questions will be answered with the ever-growing fossil record and the field of paleo-histology, which is the science of studying bones and other tissues under the microscope.