Inside dinosaur bones: what bone tissues reveal about the life of fossil animals

For hundreds of years, scientists have examined fossil bones to learn about the life of the past. Recently, a wealth of new information about the lives of dinosaurs and other extinct animals has come from an unexpected source - fossilized bone tissues. By cutting into fossils to examine the tissues preserved inside, we gained new information about the metabolism, lifespan, and even the sex lives of prehistoric species. Come explore the insides of fossils and learn what that tells us about the evolutionary history of animals still alive today.

Speaker:  Sarah Werning is a PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores how changes in bone tissues in the fossil record reflect the evolution of growth and metabolic rates in reptiles, birds, mammals, and their ancestors. She has spent eleven summers collecting dinosaurs and other fossil animals in the western United States and Canada. She has a soft spot for scaly animals of the past and present.