EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Dinosaur Paleobiology
Philip John Currie, University of Alberta
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E How are Dinosaurs Different than Other Animals? Notes taken on September 22, 2014 by Edward Tanguay |
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paleontology
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began as an organized study of knowledge in the 19th century
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ways of studying dinosaurs
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fossils
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comes from the Latin fossilis which means "dug up" from fodere or "dig"
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comparative biology
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uses natural variation and disparity to understand the patterns of life at all levels
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genetic analysis
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we still have thousands of species of dinosaurs living with us today, we just call them birds
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dinosaurs in the classical sense
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lived in the Mesozoic Era, the "Age of the Reptiles"
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252 to 66 million years ago
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questions about dinosaurs
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these four animals are all extinct but only the sauropod is a dinosaur
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dimetrodon
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sauropod
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tiktaalik
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mammoth
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the word dinosaur means "terrible lizard"
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many people have the misconception that any extinct large reptile was a dinosaur, some people even think mammals such as wholly mammoths were dinosaurs
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to a paleontologist, a dinosaur has very particular characteristics based on the skeleton, e.g.
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air sinus
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hind limbs are different, unique ankles
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no other animals share this structure of legs, except, of course, their descendents, the birds
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Sir Richard Owen
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in 1854 invented the term "dinosaur"
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at that time, no complete dinosaur skeleton had been found
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only a small number of fragments were known
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jaw, hip from Megalosaurus
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teeth, vertebrae of an Iguanodon
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ribs, shoulder, part of skull, Hylaeosaurus
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each of these three had been identified as a giant prehistoric reptile
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Sir Richard Owen was the first to realize that all three shared an unusually combination of traits
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they were more closely related to each other than to any living reptile
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teeth that grew in sockets like crocodiles
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erect limbs like mammals and birds
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skeletons
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almost everything we know of dinosaurs comes back to fossilized bones
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bones are made of minerals and so do not rot away as other bodily structures
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in order to understand dinosaurs, you need to understand how dinosaur skeletons are put together
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skeleton of an eagle
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eagles, adaptations in evolution:
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wings
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large eyes
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sharp talons