Science Talk: Discovering Dinosaurs in a Land of Poverty

Madagascar is one of the very poorest countries in the world but home to incredible biodiversity, including thousands of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet. It is also rich in fossils, including some of the world's most spectacular and significant: snaggle-toothed and dome-headed dinosaurs, vegetarian pug-nosed crocodiles, basketball-sized armored frogs, and mammals with Swiss-cheese skulls. I will highlight some of these fantastic discoveries from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar made over the course of the last 33 years and put them into context of the plate tectonic and biogeographic history of Madagascar, but also of the southern supercontinent Gondwana as a whole. I will also outline how this work led us to try to enhance paleontological infrastructure in the country and to provide the first education and healthcare for the children living in our remote field areas.

Speaker: Dr. David Krause

Dr. David Krause is Senior Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science; Emeritus Distinguished Service Professor at Stony Brook University; Founder and Executive Director of the Madagascar Ankizy Fund; former Editor of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology; and former President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Born and raised on a remote cattle ranch in Alberta, Canada, Dr. Krause received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Alberta and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He was awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta in 2010, an honorary doctorate from The University of Antananarivo (Madagascar) in 2012, and the Romer-Simpson Medal from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2023 (the society's highest award). Dr. Krause is a 50-year veteran of field research in Canada, the United States, Pakistan, India, and Madagascar and has published over 135 peer-reviewed research articles and edited four monographic volumes.