RDRN/Red Deer College Lecture – 7:30 p.m.

Margaret Parsons Theatre – Red Deer College

Ticket is required and can be obtained at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre

Speaker: Dr. Philip J. Currie, PhD

Topic: New information about the quintessential “Raptor” of Alberta. Saurornitholestes langstoni

Saurornitholestes langstoni, about the size of a German Shepard dog, made big waves as a small dinosaur when it was discovered in 2014 at Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. Excavated by University of Alberta Palaeontologists, the 75 million year old skeleton is the most intact version of a small meat-eating dinosaur ever found in Canada and the only complete specimen known in the world. The specimen, part of the Laboratory for Vertebrate Palaeontology, is on loan to Japan’s National Museum of Science and Technology where U of A Scientists will continue to unearth its secrets.

Dr. Philip J. Currie is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta in the Department of Biological Sciences. He is the former Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. He has a PhD from McGill University and received honorary degrees from the Universities of Calgary (2008) and British Columbia (2015). He has published more than 225 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, another 50 scientific papers in conference volumes and books, 158 popular articles and 20 books focusing on the growth and variation of extinct reptiles, anatomy and relationships of carnivorous dinosaurs and the origin of birds. He has given hundreds of popular and scientific lectures on dinosaurs all over the world. He has received many awards and most recently in 2017 he received The Romer–Simpson Medal. The highest award issued by the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology for “sustained and outstanding scholarly excellence and service to the discipline of vertebrate palaeontology”. Also involved in the development of University of Alberta’s first massive open online course (MOOC) called DINO101 which premiered September 2013 and more than 100,000 students worldwide have taken. A new mini-course (MOOC) entitled Palaeontology: Theropod Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds, was released in 2016.