Please join us for a presentation at 5:30pm followed by a happy hour with snacks at Hotel Indigo.  This should be a really fun event!

Estimated turning ability inform interactions in the ecosystem of Tyrannosaurus rex 

Kyle Atkins-Weltman

Angular acceleration, or the ability to turn, is a key aspect of locomotion, which plays a vital role in the life history of many vertebrates. Understanding how animals performed relative to contemporaneous taxa from the same environment can shed light on important topics such as prey capture, predator avoidance, and niche partitioning. Here, we have used 3D modeling and biomechanical analysis to estimate angular acceleration in dinosaurs from the Hell Creek formation, and end-Cretaceous paleoecosystem famous for the presence of Tyrannosaurus rex. Our work, which includes both juvenile and adult T. rex, supports the hypothesis of ontogenetic niche partitioning, as well as suggesting different prey capture and predator avoidance strategies in the largest taxa.

Kyle is a PhD student at OSU and discovered a new dinosaur.  He named it Eoneophron infernalis which translated means "Pharoah's dawn chicken from hell."  He studies anatomy and physiology of the bird-like Anzu dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous Period.