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New York City Headquarters Public Lecture Asteroid Impact and the Extinction of Sharks
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"Asteroid Impact and the Extinction of Sharks: A Journey through the Geological Record" by Dr. John Chamberlain |
| Date: |
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 |
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| Time: |
6:30pm-8:45pm |
| Open to: | Public |
| Time Details: | 6:00 PM Ticket Sales
6:30 PM Reception
7:00 PM Lecture
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| Location: | The Explorers Club
46 East 70th Street
New York, NY 10021
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| Detailed Description: | Today the great white shark is known as the world’s largest predatory fish and has a reputation for being a fierce and aggressive predator. They can grow up to 21 feet long and are known to eat other sharks, dolphins, seals, turtles, birds and yes, humans. White sharks are efficient and effective apex predators. Yet the ancestors of these fearsome beasts barely survived a decline as a result of ecosystem collapse caused by a cataclysmic event 65 million years ago.
Join Professor John Chamberlain, Chairman of the Department of Geology at Brooklyn College, as he takes you on a journey through the geological record to explore the history of sharks, searching on land and sea for clues to their ancestry, environments, and role in the ecosystem.
Great whites, hammerheads, makos, bulls -- shark ancestors go back about 400 million years. Over the past 10 years John has led a handful of students into the summer heat of the Badlands of South Dakota where temperatures can rise to 114 degrees. The group scours the landscape for fossils of marine life that lived here 70 million years ago when the area was a seaway stretching from what is now the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
This area offers geologists an opportunity to help unlock the mystery of what caused dinosaurs to become extinct and sharks to survive. Tonight, Prof. Chamberlain addresses questions such as what happened to the Earth’s marine life some sixty-five million years ago when a huge asteroid crashed into the planet and as many as 75% of the species then alive went extinct, including non-avian dinosaurs.
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| Reservation Notes: | No advanced reservations. Tickets are sold at the door on a first come, first served basis, beginning at 6pm. |
| Contact Email: | events@explorers.org |
| Member Ticket Price: | free; student members free |
| Guest Ticket Price: | $20; reciprocal club members $5 with i.d. |
| Student Ticket Price: | $5 with i.d. |
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