Dinosaurs in Your Backyard: New Discoveries in the Rocky Mountain West @ Chautauqua Community House

Like the pages of an upturned book, nearly the entire history of dinosaurs and their lost ecosystems were revealed by the uplift and erosion of mountains across the Rocky Mountain region. The fossils of Colorado were among the first to be discovered over a century ago, revealing fantastic forms like the plated Stegosaurus and the giant, long-necked sauropods. However, numerous discoveries along the Colorado Front Range, and elsewhere in the West, have begun to reveal new dinosaur species. These ecosystems can teach us much about life on a dynamic planet. Using the same techniques as early paleontologists, mixed with new technologies and enthusiastic volunteers, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science has leaped to the forefront of discovery.

About the Speaker:
Joe Sertich is Curator of Dinosaurs at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He received his B.S. from Colorado State University, his M.S. at the University of Utah, and his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on dinosaurs and their ecosystems during the Late Cretaceous. His field-based research is split between the Gondwanan continents of the southern hemisphere and western North America. He is one of the primary researchers on the Madagascar Paleontology Project exploring the latest Cretaceous of Madagascar. Sertich is also searching for the first Cretaceous dinosaurs of Africa, including work in northern Kenya.

In North America, he leads the Laramidia Project, currently working to uncover a lost world of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period of southern Utah and northwestern New Mexico and Colorado.