"Stories in Stone: The Life Histories of Dinosaurs": In-Person Badger Talk in Appleton, WI

This is a free, in-person event hosted on October 15, 2025 at 12:00 PM by the Noon Hour Philosophers as a part of their Wednesday presentation series. No registration is required to attend.

One of the most fascinating things about the geological record is the preservation of our planets history. It is a history that can be told from many different perspectives at many different scales ranging from the preservation of raindrops to dynamic times of great calamities, continental upheavals, and biological revolutions. One such revolution occurred nearly 230 million years ago when dinosaurs arose from a group of small agile upright reptiles. This revolution was so successful that dinosaurs dominated terrestrial ecosystems for nearly 170 million years, just as they dominate the air today. Each new dinosaur locality holds a vast array of information that lends insight into the lives of these fantastical creatures, from the preservation of soft tissue to how they lived, breathed, and died. This talk will take us on a journey through time as we read these long-forgotten stories in stone.

Presenter Dave Lovelace is a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in Triassic-aged rocks of the Rocky Mountain West (252-201 million years ago). He joined the UW Geology Museum team as a research scientist after completing his PhD at UW-Madison’s Department of Geoscience in 2012. Dave combines the study of ancient bones, trackways, and soils to build a picture of what ecosystems looked like 230 million years ago — when the first mammals, turtles, crocodiles, lizards, dinosaurs, and birds evolved. Since becoming a member of the museum team, Dave had made several exciting discoveries including: the oldest known turtle tracks in the world, two mass-death-assemblages of Late Triassic amphibians, and the oldest dinosaur tracks in Wyoming.

You may also like the following events from Badger Talks:

• This Friday, 3rd October, 08:00 pm, Universe in the Park: In-person Badger Talk at Kettle Moraine State Forest, Hartford, WI in Hartford
• This Sunday, 5th October, 09:30 am, "Helping Plants Adapt to Climate Change: Lessons from the Last Ice Age": Badger Talk in Madison, WI in Madison
• Next Monday, 6th October, 10:00 am, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: The Ship, The Storm, The Song": In-Person Badger Talk in La Crosse in La Crosse