Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology

• Week 1 - Appearance and Anatomy
  This lesson covers the diversity in dinosaur appearances, and will be able to identify major features of the major groups of dinosaurs.
• Week 2 - Death and Fossilization
  This module describes how fossils form, how we interpret the taphonomy of skeletons and bonebeds, and looks at the possible biases taphonomic events may create in the fossil record.
• Week 3 - Eating
  This module looks at the variety of food types, feeding habits, and feeding adaptations amongst the major groups of dinosaurs.
• Week 4 - Moving Around
  This module helps students understand the general modes and styles of locomotion in the major dinosaur groups. It also describes general methods of evaluating hypotheses on locomotion.
• Week 5 - Birth, Growth and Reproduction
  This module provides a generalized life history of a dinosaur, from birth through adulthood, including reproduction. The student will be able to describe major techniques of evaluating growth stages and rates in dinosaurs.
• Week 6 - Attack and Defense
  Examines the behaviours and structures that may have served for attack or defence through the lifetime of a dinosaur.
• Week 7 - What is a Species?
  This module will teach the different ways of defining what a species is. Students will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different species concepts for different situations.
• Week 8 - Evolution
  This module will describe the basic theories of speciation, and discusses how how these different methods of speciation may have occurred, including both hypothetical and empirical examples.
• Week 9 - Stratigraphy and Geologic Time
  This method provides basic stratigraphic concepts and the scale of earth history. Students will understand the evolution of dinosaurs through time, including which groups evolved when and where.
• Week 10 - Paleogeography and Plate Tectonics
  This module presents the basic concepts in plate tectonics and the evolution of the earth’s surface.
• Week 11 - Dinosaur Origins
  This module will look at the evolution of dinosaurs from non-dinosaurian archosaurs.
• Week 12 - Dinosaur Extinction
  The module will examine the end-Cretaceous extinction event, and provide examples of vertebrate groups that both persisted and died out during the event.

Philip John Currie, PhD
Professor and Canada Research Chair, Dinosaur Paleobiology
Department of Biological Sciences