DinoFest 2018 Speaker: Kathleen Ritterbush
DinoBite — 1:30 p.m.
"Were Ammonites Fast Food?"
When dinosaurs ruled the earth, ammonites ruled the seas! These squid-like animals left a glorious record of spiral shells favored by fossil-lovers worldwide, but scientists still debate what the animals did with their time. Join the University of Utah’s own Dr. Ritterbush in exploring how shell shape might reveal which ammonites could dash, cruise, drift, and bob away from becoming lunch for the next passing ichthyosaur!
Dr. Kathleen Ritterbush is an Assistant Professor of Paleontology at the University of Utah. She started a science career teaching marine biology on boats and marine stations in California and Hawaii, then got a PhD studying how Jurassic sea life responded to a global mass extinction at the dawn of the dinosaur age. Her BS in Environmental Science is from Cal Lutheran, and PhD from University of Southern California. Her current field work is focused in the American West, Peruvian Andes, and Canadian Rockies, and she also runs a microscope and a hydrodynamics lab at the U.