DinoFest 2019 Speaker: Michelle Stocker
The Triassic Did It First: Dinosaurs Converged on Earlier Reptile Body Plans by Michelle Stocker, Assistant Professor in Paleobiology, Virginia Tech University
Dinosaurs possessed a wide range of iconic shapes and sizes, from the largest terrestrial animals, sauropods, to ceratopsians bearing extensive crests and horns on their heads. However, Triassic archosaurian reptiles and their close relatives displayed a remarkable range of body shapes that only later evolved in dinosaurs. This early exploration of classically dinosaurian body plans and possibly ecologies by Triassic archosaurs may have been a response to the end-Permian mass extinction, laying the groundwork for dinosaurian success later in the Mesozoic.