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January 5, 2026 – Jim Kirkland – Keeping Up With The “Raptors”: The Evolution Of Armor In Polacanthine Ankylosaurs Across The J/K Boundary
January 5 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm MST
Free
Dr. Jim Kirkland earned a BS in Geology from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, an MS in Geology from Northern Arizona University, and a PhD in Geoscience from the University of Colorado. For the past 27 years, he has been the Utah State Paleontologist, permitting and promoting Utah’s paleontological resourcesfor the public good. After telling people he would be a paleontologist at age five, has spent more than 50 years excavating fossils across thesouthwest US and Mexico, authoring and coauthoring more than 100 papers on Mesozoic environments, biostratigraphy, paleobiogeography, and paleoecology; naming 24 new dinosaur species (including the giant “raptor,” Utahraptor, and the best understood polacanthine ankylosaur, Gastonia), other tetrapods, many fossil mollusks and fossil fish. He has shown that Grand County, Utah, preserves the most complete Lower Cretaceous terrestrial sequence in the world.
Please see Jim’s lecture at a meeting for the Utah Friends of Paleontology J-K Boundary Mass ExtinctionChrista Sadler’s new book covering Dr. Kirkland’s life’s work on the Cedar Mt dinosaur faunas “Dinosaur Frontier.” https://this-earth.com/dinosaur-frontier/