What to learn more about dinosaurs?
Welcome to the Natural History of Dinosaurs.
My name is Benjamin Burger.
I’m a paleontologist teaching at Utah State
University, at the Uintah Basin campus located
in Vernal Utah.
Right in the heart of Utah’s dinosaur country.
This 
series of lectures we will cover many details
about the Natural History of Dinosaurs.
Who were the dinosaurs?
How did they evolved over the Millions of
Years they lived on Earth?
And look at dinosaurs with a clear scientific
examination.
How we know they existed, and how we can better
reconstruct their lives from fossilized remains
buried in the rocks.
Before going on with this series, I would
like to introduce myself to you, and outline
my qualifications for teaching a class on
dinosaurs.
I’ve always been interested in rocks and
fossils since I was a little kid.
My room growing up in Colorado was a little
museum of rocks and minerals I’d collected
or assembled.
Early on I knew that I wanted to study geology,
and in particular paleontology.
After high school, I attended the University
of Colorado, and enrolled in every course
that would enable me to be a stellar paleontologist,
including courses in both the geology and
biology departments.
After my second year at college I spend a
summer in Wyoming, collecting vertebrate fossils
and helping on a graduate student’s research
project in the Bridger Basin of Wyoming.
It was there that I meet my girlfriend and
later my wife.
The following year, I spent writing an undergraduate
thesis on a small fossil mammal known from
the same rock units.
Using hundreds of fossil jaws and teeth, I
determined how the various species evolved
and changed with the different layers in the
rocks.
I saw how species changed both gradually and
abruptly, due to ecological changes to the
environment, over the space of several million
years.
The next summer, I was lucky enough to accompany
a professor and fellow students to southeastern
Colorado, where we documented dinosaur sites
for the United States Military, as part of
a survey of paleontological resources on lands
managed by the Army.
It was a fun summer, and taught me a great
deal about how to find dinosaur fossils.
After I graduated, I followed my girlfriend
east, and enrolled at Stony Brook University
in New York to study Anatomy.
Anatomy is important to clearly understand
if you are interested in dinosaurs.
In fact many of the world’s experts in dinosaur
paleontology teach at Medical Universities,
because knowing the anatomy of a human, also
gives you greater insight in understanding
in the reconstruction of dinosaurs from fossilized
bones.
I spent two years dissecting human cadavers,
but during the summer, I would return to Wyoming
and collect fossils for the American Museum
of Natural History, in New York City.
After leaving Stony Brook with a Masters Degree,
I was extremely fortunate to get a full time
job at the American Museum in New York.
My job was to catalogue, database and photograph
the dinosaur collections there.
The next five years I spent looking at each
dinosaur fossil, and getting to know the collections
inside and out.
The job was really challenging.
First many dinosaurs are really big, and photographing
their bones is hard, especially dinosaur fossils
that are dissembled or fragmentary that are
not on public display.
The second challenge was how vast the museum’s
collection is.
The museum is one of the oldest museums in
the United States, scientists there have discovered
many of the most famous dinosaurs, such as
Tyrannosaurus rex, and my discoveries in the
Gobi Desert of Mongolia, such as Velociraptor.
In 2001 and 2002, I traveled to Egypt, and
collected fossils in Al Fayyum with a team
of international paleontologists.
I decided that although I loved working at
a museum, my heart was really in fieldwork
and leading expeditions of my own.
I was also interested in fossil mammals, particularly
in studying what happened after the extinction
of the dinosaurs.
So I returned to school, to pursue a PhD degree.
I returned to Colorado, and studied under
some of the world’s best experts in paleontology.
I spent five years conducting fieldwork in
Western Colorado, collecting and documenting
fossils across the Paleocene –Eocene boundary
and how mammals responded to a warming climate.
During the school year I also taught field
geology, and fell in love with teaching.
In the end I produced a 785 page dissertation.
After I graduated in early 2009, the country
fell into an economic depression.
Many museums funding dried up, and no museum
or university was hiring at the time.
I moved to Utah, and started working surveying
and salvaging fossils on government lands
for various private industrial projects, in
mostly oil and gas development on public lands
in Utah, but also highway projects.
The experience gave me access to some amazing
places.
It was a blast to figure out what fossils
were present and where they could be found
in each projects location.
I worked in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah primarily,
and all the fossils I collected ended up at
various museums.
Many paleontologists I know work in this capacity,
in part from a quirk in the federal law that
was decided over a hundred years ago, here
in Vernal Utah, which states that fossils
are owned by the surface owner or managing
agency, and not considered mineral resources.
In 2009, my wife started teaching at Utah
State University a course on Human Anatomy,
and in the fall of 2011, I was extremely lucky
to also get a job teaching geology at USU,
here in Vernal Utah.
Since then, I’ve taught many courses in
paleontology, beyond just dinosaurs.
I’ve also been leading a number of paleontological
digs in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, uncovering
new fossil discoveries, and mentoring graduate
students.
I lead my own expeditions each summer where
I look for mammal fossils spanning the period
from 60 to 35 million years ago.
It has been a wonderful journey, and I really
look forward to teaching you about dinosaurs.
Now before I sign off I wanted to give you
a quick lesson on what dinosaur are and what
will be covered in this video series.
Dinosaurs are ancestral to living birds, and
are also related to living crocodiles.
They encompass about 700 to 800 species of
extinct animals, which first evolved during
the late Triassic about 235 million years
ago.
We will discuss their origin and evolution
throughout the Mesozoic, including examining
the origin of early birds during that period
as well.
The term Dinosauria, which means Terrible
Lizards was first coined by the British Anatomist
Sir Richard Owen in 1842, for three fossil
discoveries in England and Europe Megalosaurus,
Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus.
Not all dinosaurs are big giants, many are
small and resemble birds, in fact the Dinosauria
branch of the tree, also includes birds.
So birds technically are living dinosaurs.
In this series we will examine mostly the
nonavian- dinosaurs, but will spend some time
looking at the origin and early evolution
of birds as well.
In fact, this series we will examine Mesozoic
dinosaurs pretty exclusively, those are the
dinosaurs that lived from 235 to 66 million
years ago, during the Triassic, Jurassic and
Cretaceous Periods of the Mesozoic Era.
These series is designed for students interesting
in dinosaurs, but aren’t really experts
in the field, and just want to learn more
about these creatures and what we know about
them.
And hopefully inspire you to become more knowledgeable
about our Earth’s ancient past.
I hope that you enjoy this series.
And look forward to seeing you in the next
video.
