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SUMMARY:Redrawing the Dinosaur family tree - Matt Baron (University of Cam
 bridge)
DTSTART:20171023T163000Z
DTEND:20171023T173000Z
UID:TALK93877@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Charlie Eardley
DESCRIPTION:The of the origin and early evolution of the dinosaurs is a su
 bject that is currently undergoing one of the most turbulent periods in it
 s history\; new discoveries and the implementation of new technologies to 
 study them are continually providing palaeontologists with fresh insights 
 into this important moment in the history of life on Earth.\n \nRecently\,
  the historic consensus on early dinosaur evolution and interrelationships
 \, which has stood for over 130 years\, has been challenged. Through the c
 onstruction of a large morphological dataset of the earliest dinosaurs and
  close dinosaur relatives (all Triassic and Early Jurassic in age)\, the i
 nterrelationships at the very base of the dinosaur family have been assess
 ed and a new tree topology has been recovered. This rearrangement has plac
 ed the meat-eating theropod dinosaurs\, such a T. rex\, in a close relatio
 nship with a strange group of herbivores known as the ornithischians\, the
  group to which Triceratops and Stegosaurus belong. This novel result has 
 a number of implications for our understanding of the first appearance of 
 this well known clade of terrestrial vertebrates\, including where and whe
 n the clade may have originated.\n \nThe continued improvement and impleme
 ntation of the large early dinosaur dataset has also now revealed a number
  of other interesting things\, including a possible ‘missing-link’ din
 osaur – Chilesaurus. This bizarre animal appears to bridge the morpholog
 ical gap between the meat-eaters and the strange herbivores\, and its anat
 omy tells us a lot about how exactly this herbivorous clade first adapted 
 to eating plants.
LOCATION: Harker 1\, Department of Earth Sciences\, Downing Street
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