DinoFest 2017 Speaker: Kenneth Carpenter
DinoBite — 2:30 p.m.
"How to Fossilize a Dinosaur: the Making of Dinosaur National Monument"
Dr. Kenneth Carpenter has unearthed a novel story of how so many diverse dinosaurs came to be fossilized in the Douglass Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument in Northeastern Utah.
Although most noted for his work on dinosaurs, Kenneth Carpenter’s Ph.D. thesis (University of Colorado, 1996) was on the environment, vertebrates of the Cretaceous Seaway, and a brief review of plesiosaurs from North America.
Carpenter has published more than 250 works, including 13 books, of which his most recent is a popular examination of the carnivorous dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus. Having long held interest in Dinosaur National Monument and how those dinosaurs accumulated and became fossils, Carpenter has conducted experiments on bone burial and the fossilization process.
He has appeared on more than 33 television programs on dinosaurs and plesiosaurs and has been a scientific consultant for the BBC (Planet Dinosaur, Walking with Dinosaurs, Ballad of Big Al) and National Geographic Society Giant Screen Films (Sea Monsters).
Currently, Carpenter is the director of the Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah, where he is working to bring the museum into the 21st Century.