DinoFest 2019 Speaker: Randall Irmis
Temperature Elevated: The Hothouse World of Triassic Utah by Randall Irmis, Chief Curator & Curator of Paleontology, Natural History Museum of Utah, and Associate Professor of Geology & Geophysics, University of Utah
Utah was a very different place 210 million years ago, as early dinosaurs eked out their existence in a warm world without polar ice caps and with high atmosphericcarbon dioxide levels. New discoveries in southern Utah are revealing how this environment shaped ecosystems on land, which contained a diversity of animals ranging from large flat-headed amphibians to giant crocodile-like phytosaurs, and armored plant-eating reptiles called aetosaurs. Discover how these new finds tell us about the prelude to a mass extinction.