09-24-07

Media Release

Dinosaur Expert to Present 2007 Condon Lecture

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A paleontologist who made one of the most significant discoveries of the past decade will present the 2007 Condon Lecture at Oregon State University on Wednesday, Oct. 3.

Luis Chiappe and his team found thousands of dinosaur eggs in Patagonia, some containing fossilized embryos.

Chiappe, now the director of the newly established Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, will speak at OSU’s La Sells Stewart Center at 8 p.m. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled "An Intimate Look at the Reproductive Behavior of Giant Dinosaurs." It is being presented by the OSU College of Science.

Chiappe has led expeditions to Asia, Europe and the Americas. His other discoveries have included a huge "Terror Bird" in South America that stood over 10 feet tall, had a gigantic hooked beak, and despite being flightless, was warm-blooded, fast and the largest carnivore of its day on the continent.

From Germany, a juvenile dinosaur proved surprising, because a small patch of fossilized skin on its tail lacks feathers and feather follicles, whereas other dinosaurs with similar bone structure studied by Chiappe in China have feathers and were perhaps ancestral to birds. One of the dinosaur eggs from Argentina that contains an embryo is a pterosaur, the giant flying reptile.

The annual Condon Lectures, named for an early Oregon geologist, have been presented at OSU for over 60 years. They report on the latest scientific discoveries to a nontechnical audience.