Sunday, November 13, 2016

"What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?" with Courtney Sprain of UC Berkeley's Dept. of Earth & Planetary Science

What Really Killed the Dinosaurs? 

with Courtney Sprain of UC Berkeley's Dept. of Earth & Planetary Science
Wednesday, November16, 2016
7:30 - 8:30 pm
Terra Linda High School, Room 207
320 Nova Albion, San Rafael, CA 93903
Last Marin Science Seminar of 2016

Ammonites, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, and most famously, dinosaurs, are just a small percentage of the 75% of species that went extinct at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. What caused this mass extinction? Was it a giant meteor impact? Massive outpourings of lava and gas? Or something else all together? Join Ph.D. student, Courtney Sprain, as she walks you through the very Berkeley-centric history of the of the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and how current UC-Berkeley scientists are employing new techniques to further understand what really killed the dinosaurs. 


Courtney Sprain is a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley. In addition to her work at the Berkeley Geochronology Center with Paul Renne on late Cretaceous Earth history, Courtney Sprain works on the records of late Mesoproterozoic paleogeography and paleointensity from the North American Midcontinent Rift in the UC Berkeley Paleomagnetism Lab.

Join us and Learn! 

No comments:

Five Health Challenges that Were Deadly Before Antibiotics

Nola Palestrant, Tamalpais High School      In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered humanity’s first antibiotic, Penicillin, ...

About Us

Marin Science Seminar is a one-hour science lecture/presentation with a question and answer period open to all interested local teenagers, educators and community. Seminar sessions are held 12 Wednesday evenings during the school year, from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in the Innovation Hub at Terra Linda High School, 320 Nova Albion Way, San Rafael. Seminar speakers are scientists, mathematicians, engineers, physicians, technologists and computer programmers. The topics presented are in a specific area of the speaker’s expertise, geared to interested high school students.