Profs & Pints DC: Doom and Dinosaurs

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Doom and Dinosaurs,” a look at how mass extinctions shaped the dinosaurs and what research on these events tells us about Earth life’s long-term prospects, with Ian Wilenzik, paleontologist and visiting assistant professor of biology at George Washington University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-doom-and-dinosaurs .]

Pity the poor dinosaurs. They lacked both scientific research to help deal with potential environmental catastrophes and places where they could have a beer and discuss it.

You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to come to Profs and Pints to hear a fascinating talk on the impact of mass extinctions on dinosaur evolution and what research on dinosaurs tells us about biodiversity and Earth’s current biodiversity crisis.

Dr. Ian Wilenzik, who has studied and taught courses on dinosaur evolution, population spread, and extinction, will leave you with a greater appreciation of the resilience of life on earth and how we’re both the product and source of biologically catastrophic events.

Many of us are familiar with how a big meteor impact about 66 million years ago wiped out the Earth’s dinosaur population, leaving us only with their feathered descendants, birds. Less well known is how the Earth actually has undergone five periods of mass extinction that wiped out nearly all life, and how dinosaurs arose from one and endured another—both caused by volcanic activity—before meeting their match in the third.

To ground his discussion, Dr. Wilenzik will talk about how we study mass extinctions by looking for geologic evidence of volcanic activity, meteoric blasts, and other catastrophic activity and of gaps in the fossil record after them.

He’ll also discuss what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur, describing their distinct anatomical features. He’ll talk about how they and other forms of life evolved over long periods of time and were affected by extinction events.

We’ll look at how the meteor-caused mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous paved the way for the rise of mammals and the emergence of primates, and, eventually, us. Looking ahead to future mass extinctions and what might survive them, we’ll talk about how that plant you forget to water might have the last laugh, as well as why crocodiles might be around a while. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A Triceratops mounted skeleton at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History (Photo by Allie Caulfield / Wikimedia Commons).