DinoFest 2022 Speaker: Sara Oser

Title of Lecture: Fossil eggs and eggshell at the Grand Staircase

Lecture Description: Fossil eggs and eggshell displays a stunning array of shapes, sizes, textures, and crystal microstructure that paleontology egg-sperts can use to infer identity, nesting style, and reproductive behavior. Sara will examine the fossil record of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, which is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of fossil eggshell in the US, with at least 11 types of eggshell including dinosaurs, birds, crocodiles, and turtles that lived 75 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. Not to mention the discovery of an enigmatic, tiny fossil egg representing a new genus and species!

Bio: Sara currently works as a Meteorology and Oceanography officer for the U.S. Navy. Hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, she grew up in a landscape surrounded by fossils weathering from every hillside and rolling down every creek, inspiring an early fascination with the natural sciences. She pursued that passion by studying fossil eggs as a graduate student at both Montana State University and the University of Colorado (home of the famed Karl Hirsch fossil egg collection), including naming a new genus and species of fossil eggshell.

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