For a generation that has grown up with the anthropomorphized dinosaurs of animated films, perhaps it’s easy to believe that dinosaurs have zany relatives — even birds.
But in the scientific community, it’s groundbreaking stuff, according to Dr. Philip Currie, a former curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrell Museum and current Canada Research Chair.
Currie gave three talks in Athabasca last Thursday thanks to Science Outreach-Athabasca: two at Landing Trail Intermediate School, and one Athabasca University that delved deeper into the topic of dinosaurs and the evolution of birds.
At his first LTIS talk, Currie wowed the young crowd with slides of dinosaurs, including one that had no teeth, possibly because it ate other dinosaurs’ eggs with its beak-like nose.
“We now know that many of the meat-eating dinosaurs had feathers,” Currie said, adding that dinosaurs are closely related to modern birds.
Currie revealed tricks of the paleontology trade, telling students that when walking in the fossil-laden Alberta badlands, he never looks for just one bone. Instead, he looks for multiple bones in close proximity, as this is an indicator of a more intact skeleton.
Currie noted Alberta, which had a climate like Florida’s when dinosaurs were alive, has yielded more duckbilled dinosaur skeletons than anywhere else in the world. He said there is even a promising dig along the Athabasca River — just not near here.
Audience questions included whether snakes are dinosaurs (they are not) and if Currie has ever found a caveman (he has not).
