Natural History Series

On April 16th and 17th, LEARN, in partnership with St. George’s School of Montreal, will be sponsoring presentations by some of the world’s leading paleontologists at McGill University’s Redpath Museum of Natural History. The presentations will be accompanied by hands-on workshops. Student delegates from grades 5 to 11 representing anglophone school boards across Quebec will be eligible to attend this incredible event. They will have the opportunity to participate, explore and learn about Paleontology, the ecologies of the past, evolution, and our place, as humans, in the world.

The complete schedule for the day is available here.

A series of podcasts has been produced to introduce the topic of natural history. You can listen to the individual podcasts by clicking on the links in the righthand column, you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or you can get more information on this page.

Participants will engage in interactive, innovative, and challenging activities enabling them to understand that Paleontology incorporates knowledge from biology, geology, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, and even computer science. They will take a journey into the Natural World led by World Renowned Scientists- Paleontologists.
McGill’s Dr. Hans Larsson will be hosting Dr. Philip Currie and Dr. Eva Koppelhus, both from The University of Alberta. Sessions over two days will cover such fascinating topics as the life and times of dinosaurs in Canada, T. Rex biomechanics and Mesozoic life. Students will have the opportunity to travel back in time to develop an understanding of what life was like in Canada during the Mesozoic Era from 250 and 65 million years ago. They will examine climate change, plant evolution, dinosaur evolution and mass extinction. All topics will be specially tailored to specific age groups.

Dr. Hans Larsson is a professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at McGill University. He is the Canada Research Chair in vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate curator at the Redpath Museum. Dr. Hans Larsson has done extensive fieldwork in Argentina, Niger and the Canadian arctic.  He has been involved in the discovery of eight new dinosaur species.  Most recently, his team has discovered fragments of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Arctic, the northernmost discovery of this species.

Dr. Phil Currie was Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta – a museum he helped to create. He has explored in the Canadian Arctic, Argentina, Mongolia and most points between. Known around the world as “Doctor Dino”, he has been featured on numerous television shows about dinosaurs. Most recently, the CBC National produced a documentary on his work in the badlands of Alberta. He has excavated several complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons. Dr. Currie was named by Time Magazine as one of Canada’s top five explorers and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Eva Koppelhus is a palaeobotanist. She researches fossil plants by studying their spores and pollen. She has worked with material from the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Greenland and has participated in many expeditions to such remote areas as Patagonia and Mongolia. Together with Dr. Currie, she has written children’s books and magazine articles about dinosaurs.
We have prepared 5 podcasts featuring Dr. Hans Larsson introducing the amazing world of Paleontology.