DinoFest 2019 Speaker: Kenneth Angielcyzk
Incumbency, Extinction, and the Rise of Dinosaurs by Kenneth Angielcyzk, associate curator of paleomammalogy at the Field Museum
The Age of Dinosaurs began in the aftermath of the largest mass extinction in Earth history. The extinction destroyed stable communities that were dominated by ancient mammal relatives, and new research shows the emergency of forerunners of dinosaurs and crocodiles coincided with the building of stable ecosystems. More broadly, the work elucidates the roles of extinction and recovery in the removal of previously ecologically-dominant groups of animals, allowing upstarts like dinosaurs to diversify.