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This is a free, in-person talk hosted on June 5, 2026 at 11:00 AM CDT by Racine Public Library in Racine, WI. More registration information to come. There will be no virtual option for this talk.One of the most fascinating things about the geological record is the preservation of our planets history. It is a history that can be told from many different perspectives at many different scales ranging from the preservation of raindrops to dynamic times of great calamities, continental upheavals, and biological revolutions. One such revolution occurred nearly 230 million years ago when dinosaurs arose from a group of small agile upright reptiles. This revolution was so successful that dinosaurs dominated terrestrial ecosystems for nearly 170 million years, just as they dominate the air today. Each new dinosaur locality holds a vast array of information that lends insight into the lives of these fantastical creatures, from the preservation of soft tissue to how they lived, breathed, and died. This talk will take us on a journey through time as we read these long-forgotten stories in stone.
Dave Lovelace is a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in Triassic-aged rocks of the Rocky Mountain West (252-201 million years ago). He joined the UW Geology Museum team as a research scientist after completing his PhD at UW-Madison’s Department of Geoscience in 2012. Dave combines the study of ancient bones, trackways, and soils to build a picture of what ecosystems looked like 230 million years ago — when the first mammals, turtles, crocodiles, lizards, dinosaurs, and birds evolved. Since becoming a member of the museum team, Dave had made several exciting discoveries including: the oldest known turtle tracks in the world, two mass-death-assemblages of Late Triassic amphibians, and the oldest dinosaur tracks in Wyoming.
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Event Venue
Racine Public Library, 75 7th St, Racine, WI 53403-1201, United States
Tickets
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