Event type:
Evening meeting, Regional Group
Organised by:
South West Regional Group
Venue:
Plymouth University, Plymouth
Event status:
EVENT CLOSED
To celebrate the 175th year of the naming of the Dinosauria - join the south-west regional group in the city where Professor Sir Richard Owen first described and then proposed this new name in an article published in the "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science" in 1842.
In that article, Owen wrote, "The combination of such characters, some, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or suborder of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria." (from Owen's "Report on British Fossil Reptiles." Part II. Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Plymouth, England, 1842).
Professor Mike Benton (University of Bristol) will be giving a lecture at the "birth-place" of the Dinosauria. Following a brief historical overview, we will then get a taste for the latest research that is being undertaken.
In the past 175 years, dinosaur palaeobiologists have picked up all the key questions that intrigued Owen and the Victorians
- how many species were there;
- what did they look like;
- were they warm-blooded or not;
- did they give rise to birds;
- why did they die out?
A revolution in computational methods of study in the past 20 years has greatly enriched our understanding on all aspects of the form and function, relationships, origin, evolution, and extinction of the dinosaurs.
Time
6.30pm for 7.00pm
Venue
Plymouth University
Drake Circus
Plymouth
Devon
PL4 8A