Lectures on Tap - "Fossils: The Evolution of Pathology in Dinosaurs & More"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Fossils: The Evolution of Pathology in Dinosaurs & More"

🎤 Speaker: Dr. Megan Whitney

Paleontology isn’t just about uncovering ancient bones—it’s about reconstructing ancient lives. And with life comes disease, injury, and healing. In this fascinating lecture, vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Megan Whitney will introduce you to paleopathology, the emerging field that studies evidence of illness and trauma preserved in fossils.

You’ll explore how diseases and injuries are recorded in the skeletons of dinosaurs and their mammalian forerunners, and what those clues reveal about the evolution of pathology over hundreds of millions of years. From strange bone growths to signs of healed fractures, these fossils tell intimate stories about how prehistoric animals lived, suffered, adapted, and survived.

Dr. Whitney is a vertebrate paleontologist at Loyola University Chicago whose research focuses on animals that lived between 520–220 million years ago. Her passion for biodiversity and deep time has taken her to field sites as remote as Antarctica and Zambia in search of answers hidden in stone.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.