Saturday March 8, 2014

Time

Sunday March 9, 2014

Opening Comments

9:00-9:30

Megalodon: How Did the World’s Largest Shark Live?

Dana Ehret Ph.D.,  Curator of Paleontology, Alabama Museum of Natural History

The Beginning of the Age of Mammals in New Mexico

Tomas Williamson Ph.D, Curator of Paleontology, New Mexico Museum of Natural History

9:30-10:00

The Life and Death of Whales: New Discoveries About the Evolution of the World’s Largest Animals

Nick Pyenson Ph.D., Curator of Marine Mammals, Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of Natural History

Survivors: Turtles of the Early Cenozoic

Tyler Lyson Ph.D., Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of Natural History

10:00-10:30

The Final Days of Mammoths and Mastodons

Chris Widga Ph.D., Curator of Geology, Illinois State Museum

BREAK

10:30-11:00

BREAK

Tropical Wyoming: Using Early Eocene Leaves from Fossil Lake to Infer Climate

Arvid Aase, Curator at Fossil Butte National Monument, Kemmerer, WY

11:00-11:30

Horses and Bison: Icons of the Ice Age

Eric Scott Ph.D., Curator of Paleontology, San Bernardino County Museum-Redlands

Unique Fauna of Fossil Lake

Lance Grande Ph.D, Field Museum Distinguished Service Curator, Field Museum of Natural History

11:30-12:00

Deadly Carving Tooth: The Sabercat, Smilodon fatalis

Julie Meachen Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Anatomy, Des Moines University

BREAK

12:00-1:30

BREAK

Terrestrial Biotic Response to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Jonathan Bloch Ph.D., Research Foundation Professor, University of Florida

1:30-2:00

Stories Yet Untold: The History of Crocodyliforms After the Age of Dinosaurs 

Christopher Brochu Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Geology, University of Iowa

The Age of Mammals Snakes:  Cenozoic Diversity and Radiations of Squamate Reptiles

Jason Head Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska

2:00-2:30

A Vanished Ecosystem: Late Tertiary Fossils from Northern Indiana (Pipe Creek Sinkhole, Grant County)

James Farlow Ph.D., Professor of Geology, Purdue University-Fort Wayne

BREAK

2:30-3:00

BREAK

New Vertebrate Fossils from the Cenozoic of Madagascar

Karen Samonds Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biology, Northern Illinois University

3:00-3:30

A Lost World Found: Texas in the Mid-Cretaceous

Christopher Noto Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Parkside

Murderous Weapon Indeed: Evidence of Fatal Combat within the “False Saber-Toothed Cats”

Clint Boyd Ph.D., Haslem Postdoctoral Fellow, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

3:30-4:00

Discovering New Dinosaurs in Well-Known Places: A How-To Gude

David Evans Ph.D., Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Royal Ontario Museum

The Emergence of Modern People

Fred Smith PhD., Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Illinois State University

4:00-4:30

Wounding Tooth Starts a Family: Reproduction in the Cretaceous Theropod Troodon formosus

Dave Varricchio Ph.D., Associate Professor of Paleontology, Montana State University