About Visit with Dr. Scott Sampson at the Museum

PRI will host a Weekend with Dr. Scott Sampson, host of the PBS KIDS hit series, Dinosaur Train, with events for paleontologists of all ages!

The weekend is comprised of three separate events and each event is free with the price of Museum and/or Nature Center admission. The Nature Center event can be viewed on the Cayuga Nature Center page.

Dr. Scott Talks Dinosaurs
Saturday, May 17th
10:00 - 1:00 pm
TBD/Museum of the Earth
This interactive presentation is tailored for preschoolers, toddlers, and anyone who is a Dinosaur Train or Paleontology enthusiast. The venue for the presentation is yet-to-be determined (so PLEASE watch this space and/or sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage) followed by a meet-and-greet with Dr. Scott at the Museum.

This kid-friendly, interactive 40-minute presentation will offer Junior Paleontologists of all ages a chance to learn the ins and outs of being a dinosaur paleontologist, from that "Aha" moment of discovery, to digging up fossils, to preparing them back at the museum, to studying them as a scientist. What is a dinosaur and what isn't? Dr. Scott the Paleontologist, host of the PBS KIDS hit series, Dinosaur Train, will lead this lively tour and even share a BIG secret at the end. This event will be followed by a meet-and-greet with Dr. Scott.

Join WSKG Youth Services and the Museum education department for fun hands-on activities after the presentation.

NOTE: the presentation will take place outside under a tent on the Museum grounds. The rest of the activities will take place inside the Museum.

Dinosaurs of the Lost Continent
Saturday, May 17th
3:00 - 5:00 pm
Museum of the Earth
This is an academic lecture tailored for scientists and science enthusiasts; not appropriate for children.

For more than a century, paleontologists collected abundant, often spectacular dinosaur fossils from the Western Interior of North America, with the bulk of these remains found in rocks dating to the final stages of the Cretaceous Period. Only recently have we learned that most of these dinosaurs--among them horned, duck-billed, dome-headed, and armored plant-eaters, as well as giant tyrannosaur meat-eaters and smaller "raptor-like" predators--existed on a "lost continent," today referred to as "Laramidia." About 96 million years ago, exceptionally high sea levels flooded central North America, resulting in a narrow seaway extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. This shallow sea isolated life forms on the eastern and western landmasses for most the next 26 million years. We know little of what happened on the eastern landmass, but its western counterpart, Laramidia, witnessed a tremendous florescence of dinosaurs and other Cretaceous life forms. Surprisingly, despite the small size of Laramidia (less than one-quarter the size of present day North America) and giant sizes of many of the dinosaurs, different species co-existed in the northern and southern regions, at least during certain intervals. The strongest evidence of these isolated dinosaur "provinces" comes from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah, which has recently revealed a previously unknown assemblage of dinosaurs. How were so many giant animals able to co-exist on such a diminutive landmass? Why were most of these dinosaurs adorned with bizarre bony features such as horns, crests, domes, or spikes? Scott Sampson will address these questions and more, exploring some of the latest ideas and controversies reviewed in his book, Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life (University of California Press, 2009).

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