Paleo201 comes to an end

The first offering of Paleo201, Dinosaurs in the Fossil Record, essentially comes to an end today with the final field trip of the semester. The students will have their exam later in December.

Even though it is a lot of work to be involved in the creation of a new course, I think Paleo201 is a great addition to the University of Alberta's paleontology offerings. Using the Dino101 content on Coursera, and pitched at an essentially first-year level (despite its 200 designation) for students from all faculties, Paleo201 is what's called a blended learning course. We rely on the Dino101 course videos to deliver the base lecture content for the course, which means we typically only meet once per week for an in-class lesson. These lessons have included research talks by grad students in our labs on topics relevant to each week's lesson. However, we also tried to break away from the lecture format for at least some of the in class lessons, to take advantage of some of the resources available on campus. One week we learned the basics of the rock cycle and general Canadian geology using the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Geoscience Garden, an installation of rocks from around Canada arranged in a particular fashion for students to learn basic mapping skills. And last week we did tours of the Paleontology Museum and our prep labs, including sneak peeks of some cool up and coming research projects. FUN FACT: Our Dunkleosteus skull cast was ranked higher than the dinosaur specimens in my highly scientific 'what did you find most interesting' poll. Blindingly obvious take-home message for instructors: Students like new things and surprises, and dinosaurs are not necessarily the be-all and end-all!

But the highlights, in my opinion, are the three field trips to Jurassic Forest, Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Jurassic Forest is a tourist attraction outside of Edmonton that features animatronic dinosaurs set outside in a forest. Although I had some comments that this was an odd place to take students on a university field trip, I actually think it worked really well as a way to ease students into some of the topics covered in the first couple of lessons – basic dinosaur anatomy, diversity, diet, etc. And because a lot of the signage and interpretive material at the forest has been put together by graduates of the UofA's BSc program in Paleontology, the educational content is accurate, up to date, and nicely presented.

Many of the students told me that our trip to Dry Island was the first time they had really gone hiking, so I think that speaks to the value of having a course like this one. We hiked the students around the badlands and out to the Albertosaurus bonebed, stopping to discuss  geology, look for fossils (but not collect any, as we didn't have permits this time), and talk about how we interpret bonebeds and make inferences about dinosaur behaviour. Everyone was SO EXCITED to find little bits and fragments of bones. A couple of the students told me they returned the next weekend with their families because they had enjoyed the field trip so much! Blindingly obvious take-home message for instructors: Students like to go outside! And while videos and online stuff and lectures are perfectly fine, doing 'real' things with real fossils and real locations etc. etc. can never fully replace the online experience. Also I got artists and history students and linguistics majors and such to like rocks, so there.

And today we headed down to the Tyrrell Museum, which is a bit of a long day trip from Edmonton, since Drumheller is a little more than 3 hours away – but we were helped along by some dino documentaries. As always, the museum is an amazing resource, and it was super fun to see the students putting together many of the different concepts learned this semester. There were many good questions and enthusiastic discussions about the things we were seeing. And of course, having Phil there to talk to the students about the history of the museum and some of his personal experiences in collecting many of the fossils on display is pretty cool!

Because this is partly an online course, one of the things I've tried to incorporate into the field trips is discussion of the field trip in the course discussion forums. Each time the students have had to take a picture of themselves with a backdrop of choice (favourite dinosaur at Jurassic Forest, favourite scenic view at Dry Island, favourite display at the Tyrrell) and tell us something about it. This worked really well and it is also a fun way to get some feedback about what people are twigging onto as interesting in the course. Fun fact: Not everyone's favourite dinosaur/etc. was T. rex! There is hope for the world!

This is the last course for which I will ever be a teaching assistant, as my grad school days are wrapping up in a few weeks. This course was lots of fun to teach, hopefully has been fun to take, and I hope future students and instructors have as much fun as I did!

Too many things!

Things have been quiet around this blog as of late because there have been TOO MANY THINGS. There are still too many things, but I figured I'd do a quick update as to the goings-on around these parts over the summer.

JUNE:

Jasper! I finally had a chance to visit during the summer. No dinosaurs, but lots of rocks and charismatic megafauna, so I was happy.

Another presentation for the Jurassic Forest! I talked about the ankylosaurs of Alberta. Thanks to everyone who came out to hear about the ugliest dinosaurs in our backyards.

Jurassic Forest has also opened some trail extensions discussing the evolution of mammals, and the evolution of birds. Kudos to the team at Jurassic Forest for tackling these subjects, which are super interesting and don't always get the attention they deserve (especially the origin of mammals!).

(And I like their dinosaur wrangler, too!)

JULY:

Dino101! This project has occupied a lot of my time since January. Filming was in full swing over the summer, including some scenes in our labs and museums on campus.

Body Worlds, at Telus World of Science - Edmonton! Sadly, no photos of the exhibit were allowed. I had seen the original Body Worlds exhibition in 2007, and this included largely the same plastinates and information, but presented in the context of growth and aging. However, a surprise bonus plastinate at the end tickled my fancy - they had an ostrich (presumably from Animal Inside Out?) on display!

It had been a while since I was last at TWOSE, and I found the renovated earth and environment gallery to be excellent and full of science. Make sure to check out the Science on a Sphere!

The body gallery always cracks me up.

AUGUST:

Canadian Paleontology Conference! and University of Alberta Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology 50th Anniversary Symposium! I was on the organizing committee, which kept me hopping for a lot of August. Thanks to everyone who came out last weekend. You can read more about the conference at our website.

THE FUTURE: I'm finishing my thesis this fall. My plate is pretty full with writing, job applications, and teaching (Dino101, and its sister-courses PALEO 200 and PALEO 201 at the UofA). I've got a couple of manuscripts that should be online pretty soon. Things will probably continue to be fairly quiet here, but hopefully I'll have some time to blog a little bit about research and SVP along the way. After December...well, who knows where I'll be then. Finishing things is always a little bit sad. But, onwards and upwards! Until next time!

A Return Visit to the Jurassic Forest

Last fall I visited the newly-opened Jurassic Forest and enjoyed it very much. However, because winter arrives early in Edmonton, the leaves had already fallen and the dinosaurs were quite snowy! Today I spent some time showing off ankylosaur fossils and casts with visitors at the forest, and had a chance to see the dinosaur trails in their summer greenery. Here's a few new photos from the forest!

Styracosaurus looks like it's in its natural environment.

I can't remember exactly which sauropod this is supposed to be, but I like the neck posture!

The Jurassic Forest also features a few non-dinosaurian friends, including several Pteranodon and this Dimetrodon. Right now, there are tadpoles in this marsh! (I've also heard a baby moose likes to visit the trails sometimes!)

A new addition this summer is Spinosaurus.

Jurassic Forest has been hosting special presentations for the last few weeks, including talks on tyrannosaur tails by fellow grad student Scott Persons, the dinosaurs of northwest Alberta by Robin Sissons and Kat Ormay (of GPRC), and presentations by Phil Currie and Jack Horner. You can keep track of their special events at this page or via their email newsletter.

Also, you can ride on this lovely Euoplocephalus! (He has a saddle, or else he'd be a bit spiky I think...)

A visit to the Jurassic Forest.

The University of Alberta has a pretty active Palaeontological Society with undergrad, grad student, and faculty members, and when we can we try to organize palaeo-themed field trips. Lucky for us, this summer Edmonton had a very cool new dinosaur attraction open called the Jurassic Forest, so of course we had to check it out.

I should probably point out that winter arrives early in Edmonton...we had our first snowfall earlier this week.

One of the nicest things about the Jurassic Forest is that the animatronic dinosaurs are presented in what is probably close to their ‘natural’ habitat. Many of them are partially obscured by the trees and the effect can be quite convincing as you come up on these little vignettes. Here an Albertosaurus charges a herd of Styracosaurus, who wave their frills and roar.

One of the favourites was the pair of Edmontosaurus. I think it was the combination of the position in the forest, the lighting, and the fairly anatomically correct animatronics – all the details added up to really transport you back in time. Plus, Edmontosaurus may even have seen the occasional weather like this...

Another favourite was the duelling Pachycephalosaurus!

Most of the animatronics were pretty good, and Scott and I are pretty sure they are done by the same company that did the ones we saw at Dino Dino Dream Park back in Beijing this summer. The only ones I was really disappointed with were the Pteranodon, which were standing on their back legs, leaning forward, wings spread and ‘flapping’. Why won’t people show quadrupedal pterosaurs? They would still look cool!

I was also pleased to see two ankylosaurs make an appearance! Although both were labelled “Ankylosaurus”, they were clearly modeled off the British Museum’s Euoplocephalus specimen, but that’s ok. They were trying.

Tyrannosaurus closes the show at the end of the trails, of course. Somewhat bizarrely, he is roaring while eating a baby Corythosaurus and stepping on another somewhat indeterminate hadrosaur.

The Jurassic Forest also has a playground and sand pit for digging up fossils, and a multi-purpose educational room. I hear that their first summer of operation went pretty well, and I’m glad – the experience is pretty fun, and although Alberta has a lot of dinosaur attractions, we didn’t really have anything near Edmonton besides a small display at the Royal Alberta Museum. Some of the models are a little off, and there isn’t a whole lot of coherency to what dinosaurs appear in which order. But the placement of the dinosaurs in the forest is really great, there’s lots of signage about the science of palaeontology, and I think that with a tour guide for a school group this would be an excellent educational resource. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to go back in the spring or summer when it’s a bit greener!