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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Thursday, February 1, 2018 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Ray Stanford
with additional comments by
Martin Lockley

"A Surprising Life and Death Dinosaur-Age Drama Found Beneath Our Feet at Goddard"

ABSTRACT -- The Goddard discovery is unprecedented, with over 80 footprints providing a 'time-machine window' into dinosaur-age organismal interactions and inter-dependencies never seen before. Approximately 110 million years ago, at least three species of mammals foraged while dinosaurs stealthily stalked them and reptiles that could fly fed nearby, providing a unique window on life. This will be a first-hand, step-by-step findings account by discoverer Ray Stanford.

SPEAKER -- Ray Stanford retired from his position with a Texas corporation in 1986 and moved to Maryland. He had "very little interest in dinosaurs or their tracks" until he and his three children came across an iguanodon footprint near College Park. Soon, sauropod footprint finds brought realization that important and hitherto-unknown discoveries awaited locally. Subsequently, hundreds of footprints — of dinosaurs, mammals, and pterosaurs (aka, pterodactyls) — pterosaurs (aka, pterodactyls) -- and small trackways have been discovered. Many of them are scientifically published, including Stanford's new dinosaur species, Propanoplosaurus marylandicus, a hatchling nodosaur on display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

SPEAKER -- Martin Lockley is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Denver (UCD). He is best know for his work on dinosaur trackways and is a former director of the UCD Dinosaur Tracks Musuem. He holds a BSc in Geology from Queens University Belfast and a PhD from the University of Birmingham. While serving at UCD he earned a BA in Spanish with a minor in religious studies.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov