“Modern Indiana Jones” Dr. Paul Sereno speaking at Berea College Thursday
03/03/08
The discoverer of dinosaurs on five continents and the leader of dozens of expeditions, Dr. Paul Sereno has been called a “modern Indiana Jones” after the fictional archeologist/adventurer of movie fame. Sereno will talk about some of his most exciting discoveries in a program at Berea College this Thursday, beginning at 3 p.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel.
In his talk at Berea, Sereno will take his audience back 100 million years to Africa, where he and his team have found sensational new dinosaurs in the fossil record, as well as a 40 foot long crocodile, dubbed SuperCroc. Through his discoveries and study of dinosaur fossils world-wide, Sereno aims to reconstruct the dinosaur family tree and understand how the movement of the continents affected dinosaur evolution.
The Berea College Convocation is free and open to the public and is the annual Berea College Science Lecture.
Sereno began his field work in 1988 in the foothills of the Andes in Argentina, where his team discovered the first dinosaurs to roam the Earth – the predators Herrerasaurus and the primitive Eoraptor, the “dawn stealer.” These expeditions revealed the most complete picture yet of the dawn of the dinosaur era, some 225 million years ago.
In the early 1990′s Sereno’s research shifted to the Sahara, and the search for Africa’s lost world of dinosaurs. Expeditions to Niger and Morocco resulted in Sereno’s team discovering and naming: Afrovenator, a new 27-foot-long meat-eater; skeletons of a 70-foot-long plant-eater he named Jobaria; a bizarre fish-eating dinosaur named Suchomimus, with huge claws and a sail on its back; and the 45-foot-long plant-eater Nigersaurus. Sereno and his team also discovered the most fleet-footed meat-eater, 30-foot-long Deltadromeus, and the skull of a huge, T. rex-sized meat-eater Carcharodontosaurus. Besides new and unusual dinosaurs, Sereno’s team stumbled on the world’s largest crocodile, the 40-foot-long Sarcosuchus.
Other expeditions have taken Sereno and his team to India and the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia.
The author of books and stories in National Geographic and Natural History and subject of many documentaries, Sereno’s recognition includes Chicago Tribune’s Teacher of the Year Award (1993), Chicago magazine’s Chicagoan of the Year (1996), Newsweek magazine’s The Century Club (1997), People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People (1997), Esquire’s 100 Best People in the World (1997), Boston Museum of Science’s Walker Prize for extraordinary contributions in paleontology (1997), and Columbia University’s University Medal for Excellence (1999).
Sereno earned his undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University and Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1987. Later that year he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he now teaches paleontology and evolution to graduates and undergraduates and human anatomy to medical students.
In 1999, he co-founded Project Exploration, a nonprofit outreach organization dedicated to bringing the excitement of scientific discovery to the public providing innovative educational opportunities for city kids and girls. Sereno is also one of the National Geographic’s esteemed Explorer’s-in-Residence.
CONTACT:
Contact: Julie Sowell (859)985-3028
