Paleo education outline

[Martin Baeker <martin@raptor.ifw.ing.tu-bs.de>]

Hi,

I am just preparing a 45 minute talk for my colleagues (who are engineers)
on dinosaurs, so I thought I would share a few ideas with you.

What would, to me, be the most important thing is to show how paleontology
works as a science. That is perhaps trivial for you, but I would stress
that it is not about just digging up and describing bones, but rather a
scientific process where arguments and counterarguments have to be found
and weighted. You might try to exemplify this on any controversial
dino-topic (if it is dinos you are mainly interested in), like
warmbloodedness, or why birds are dinos (not so contreoversial anymore,
mostly). So I would recommend not just to state facts, but to show
arguments and trains of thought. 

What may also be interesting for a science class is to show how
paleontology is really a very interdisciplinary thing, where geology,
physics, even astronomy, behavioural biology, molecular biology and other
things come in. On that I would strongly recommend "Evolution and
extonction of the dinosaurs" by Farlow and Weishampel, IIRC. (You can find
that on any internet-dino-book list). I am sure your teacher will love
this, if you can throw in  many other sciences, and at least for those
interested in these other sciences it might also be nice.

More specifically, I would say you should answer the following
dino-questions everybody has:

- What is (and is not) a dinosaur?  Here I would like to add that to most
lay-people a cladistic definition is not satisfactory, they want to know
how to identify a dinosaur.

- Why did they become so big? And how did they manage that?
 
- Are birds dinosaurs?

- Why did they become extinct?

If you do not answer these, many people will probably be disappointed. 

You might also feel compelled to clear up some of the dino-myths:

-Mammoths are not dinos,

-Dinos were not slow, stupid, and ill-adapted critters,

-Sauropods did not live neck-deep in water,

-Not all dinos lived at the same time.

It may be surprising to some, but I just found out that all these are
misconceptions even held among some otherwise well-educated people.

In addition, I would focus on one or two special adaptations, like
chewing
in hadrosaurs, or the special wrist-mechanism of some theropods, or
something similar in non-dinosaurs. 

If you decide, as someone suggested, to show a video clip, it might be
interesting at the end to discuss in some detail which parts of it are
based on things we know, things we guess, or are really just speculation.  

I hope this helps a bit,
if you have any qustion on these ideas, please just send me an e-mail
(however, I may not be able to answer before next week, as I am abroad for
a few days.)

Best regards,

Martin.

                   Dr. Martin Baeker
                   Institut fuer Werkstoffe
                   Langer Kamp 8
                   38106 Braunschweig
                   Germany
                   Tel.: 00-49-531-391-3073                      
                   Fax   00-49-531-391-3058
                   e-mail <martin.baeker@tu-bs.de>