Tate Annual Summer Conference
The 27th annual Tate Conference will be held Friday June 2 through Sunday June 4, 2023. The theme this year:
The Triassic: Gateway to the Mesozoic
The Tate Conference features a day of speakers (Saturday June 3) and two days of field trips (June 2 and 4). Saturday evening includes a dinner and Keynote Speaker.
This year’s Keynote is Hans Sues of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. He will be speaking on new and exciting finds from the Triassic of Germany.
Speakers (listed randomly):
Keynote: Hans Sues, Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, “Triassic Continental Tetrapods from Germany, The Birthplace of The Triassic System”
Alexandra Apgar, University of New Mexico, “Assessing Ecological Relationships among Late Triassic Vertebrates in Petrified Forest National Park”
Bill Parker, Petrified Forest National Park, “Paleoart Reflects Our Expanding Understanding Of Life In The Western U.S. During the Triassic Period”
Christian Kammerer, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, “North American Triassic Continental Communities: A View from the East”
Jeffrey Martz, University of Houston Downtown, “Revised depositional model, lithostratigraphic nomenclature, and vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Upper Triassic Dockum Group of eastern New Mexico and western Texas.”
Rob Gay, Idaho Museum of Natural History, “River Monsters and Bears Ears; The Phytosaur Record in Bears Ears National Monument (Utah, USA)”
Robin Whatley, Columbia College, “The Origins and Persistence of Hyperodapedontine Rhynchosaur Cranial Features”
Russell Hawley, Tate Geological Museum, “Triassic World: Extinction and Experiment at the Dawn of the Age of Reptiles”
Christian Sidor, University of Washington, “Fossils from the bottom of the world: Triassic vertebrate paleontology in Antarctica”
Adam Marsh, Petrified Forest National Park, “Hunting Triassic pterosaurs in the American Southwest”
Ben Kligman, Virginia Tech, “Origins of Lepidosaurs in the Triassic of Equatorial Pangaea”
Calvin So, George Washington University, “Changing the Triassic landscape: new information and new partnerships”
Aaron Kufner, University of Wisconsin Madison, “Hard Work and Happenstance: New Finds from Wyoming’s Big Red Dead”
Ken Angielczyk, Field Museum, “A refined understanding of the paleobiological and paleoecological effects of South Africa’s Permo-Triassic mass extinction on land”
Brandon Peecook, Idaho State University, “Triassic Safari: on the hunt for the first dinosaurs across southern Pangea”
Field trips
Friday June 2… 33-Mile Road
This trip will take us to the Triassic deposits on 33-Mile Road northwest of Casper in the area of the Red Wall. A site was found here in on July 7 1977, which led to the discovery of the type specimen of Heptasuchus. Crews from the University of Wisconsin (and others) have been exploring this area more recently. Aaron Kufner of UW Madison will lead the portion of this trip to a site the UW teams found and have been collecting nearby. We may do some surface collecting at the Heptasuchus site (officially called the Clarke Locality) as well. This trip is on BLM land, and done with permission of the BLM. Personal collecting of vertebrate fossils is not allowed on BLM land, so all fossils (including fragments) collected will be collected for the University of Wisconsin collections. This is also a sage grouse lekking and nesting area. If we run into sage grouse nests, we are to keep our distance and report the nest.
Sunday June 4… Little Red Creek
This trip will be an exploration of the Alcova Limestone. The Alcova Limestone was possibly deposited in a lagoonal situation and has produced one taxon of fossil vertebrate, the sauropterygian, Corosaurus alcovensis. Remains of this animal are only found in Natrona County, southwest of Casper (so far). We will be exploring a new area that presumably has not been explored for Corosaurus bones, or at least not since the 1980’s. The bones occur in resistant limestone best found on talus slopes, so this trip will incur some more difficult walking on steep slopes. This trip is on BLM land, and done with permission of the BLM. Personal collecting of vertebrate fossils is not allowed on BLM land, so all fossils (including fragments) collected will be collected for the Tate Museum collections under permit number PA10-WY -191.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact JP Cavigelli by email or by phone 307-268-3008.
Lodging
We will have blocks of rooms reserved at the Ramkota Hotel. (Give them a call to reserve one of these rooms and make sure to tell them you are with the Tate Geological Museum group). The Ramkota offers both airport pickup and shuttles around town, including to the Tate Museum.
Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center – Casper
800 N. Poplar
Casper, WY 82601
Ramkota: (307-266-6000)