Frenchmen Formation Terrestrial
Ecosystem Conference
The first-ever conference hosted at the T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend was being called a success by one of the world's most renowned paleontologists.
Dr. Phil Currie, a professor at the University of Alberta and former director of dinosaur research at Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, had overwhelming praise for organizers of last week's event.
"I would say it's been an excellent conference.," said Dr. Currie.
"It's just the right number of people - i.e. less than 100 - which means you can actually get to talk to just about everyone here," he added, pointing out that many long-running paleontological conferences are less personal and less interactive than the one staged at Eastend last week.
The T.rex Centre hosted the ground-breaking Frenchman Formation Terrestrial Ecosystem Conference (FFTEC) in co-operation with the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and the University of Alberta. The event ran May 17th - 20th.
This conference has been a great experience for everyone involved in the organization - the T.rex Centre, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, and the University of Alberta," said T.rex Centre general manager Sean Bell, who also served as the conference's chairman. "We had roughly 60 participants, and the response was overwhelmingly positive - most people seemed thrilled to get a much clearer picture of the fossil resources of southwest Saskatchewan."
Scientists from across Canada, the United States, Europe and Argentina conducted dozens of reports and presentations over the three days.
Dr. Currie said the guest speakers and discussions were of extraordinary quality, and featured presentations that could have been found at any world-class conference.
"The talks have been very high quality," said Dr. Currie. "Some of them have been very detailed and others have been a little more general so that people who are not professionals - or people who are professionals in a different disciplines - can follow things very easily."
"And because this is a small enough group, if there's something you didn't understand, you can go and talk to the presenter afterwards and ask questions over a coffee."
Dr. Currie said one of the main benefits of holding a conference is that it can attract the interest of scientists from all over the globe. "The whole intent of doing something like this is very similar to what we did at the Tyrell Museuem when we first opened up," explained Dr. Currie. "We ran a couple of conferences there with the idea of getting as many professionals as possible in to see the place." "It (the T.rex Centre) is such a beautiful facility to work out of that keeping it in everyone's mind is a good idea," he added.
Topics at the conference ranged from dinosaurs to birds, plants and the environment in Saskatchewan 65 million years ago. Examples include the announcement of the discovery of the smallest bone of a tyrannosaur known, the youngest T.rex discovered to date, and a new species of the medium-sized herbivorous dinosaur Thescelosaurus.
Most of the research is based on the study of Saskatchewan specimens - the majority of which were collected by the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
This conference is the first to focus specifically on the diversity of ancient life in Saskatchewan.
Dr. Currie, who serves as an advisor to the T.rex board, was also among the presenters at last week's conference, presiding over a workshop that focused on "Scotty."
Scotty achieved global fame in 1994 when the Royal Saskatchewan Museum began excavation of the skeleton. Recent research indicates that Scotty is one of the heaviest and largest specimens of T.rex yet discovered.
"The workshop is an opportunity to let people know how you do things, and let them see the material in more detail," said Dr. Currie. "But it is also an opportunity to identify things we haven't been able to identify in the past.
"Because Scotty was disarticulated and many of the bones were broken up, there are pieces that we've never been able to quite identify exactly what they are," he stated.
He says bringing in different experts from across the globe might help solve some of those questions. "By getting different sets of eyes and different types of perspective, we hope to clear up some of those mysteries today," said Dr. Currie just moments before leading his workshop inside the RSM lab at the T.rex Centre.
Among the keynote speakers at last week's conference were three keynote speakers including: John Storer, a Canadian paleontologist now living in B.C., who worked in the Yukon and also served as the sciences curator at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum; Thomas Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland; and Kirk R. Johnson, the curator of paleobotany at the Denver Museum of Natural History.
This is the first conference ever hosted by the Centre, but Bell hopes it won't be the last. Organizers would ultimately like to see the facility host a conference every two years, with the subject matter changing on a rotating basis.
"The success of the FFTEC is encouraging, as I believe it is our hope to continue hosting these conferences, probably on a biannual basis," stated Bell. "As far as we are all concerned, this was only the beginning."
