Every year, paleontologists from around the world converge on an unexpecting city to share research, make new connections, and unite with old friends at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) annual meeting. This year’s meeting was in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) – a stronghold in Canadian paleontology. Six current students and two recent alumni from the Department of Geosciences at FHSU joined our Curator of Paleontology Dr. Laura Wilson at the conference. Like most professional conferences, the SVP annual meeting is filled with poster presentations and technical talks, workshops and field trips, exhibitors showcasing the latest technologies and resources, and roundtables and luncheons for subsets of the society tackling specific issues (for example: the Women in Paleontology luncheon and student roundtable).
New research always takes the limelight, and most of the FHSU representatives in attendance presented original research. We have been working hard to make the Sternberg Museum a leader in Western Interior Seaway research. The Western Interior Seaway is the ocean that covered Kansas and most of the interior of North America from roughly 100 to 66 million years ago – these are the fossils that fill our exhibit galleries, education collections, and research collections. Presentations by Sternberg Museum students and staff showcased research on marine animals from the Seaway. Third year graduate student Cyrus Green presented research on the internal bone structure of Clidastes mosasaurs; second year graduate students Pike Holman and Amber Michels presented on determining age in Dolichorhynchops pliosaurs and determine the trophic ecology of Cretaceous fishes, respectively. Recent alumni Kris Super and Logan King presented on the smallest specimen of Xiphactinus fish ever reported, and Curator Laura Wilson presented on what we know about the ecology of the Seaway based on seabird fossils.
Wilson Paleontology Research Group 