FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009
Contact: Lalena Price, University Communications, (304) 746-1989
 

Clay Center to host lunchtime seminar
on plesiosaurs presented by Marshall University professor

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – As a complement to the Clay Center’s giant screen film, “Sea Monsters,” Dr. F. Robin O’Keefe, a professor at Marshall University, will present a lunchtime lecture Wednesday called “Plesiosaurs: In the Field and in the Lab.”

O’Keefe, a paleontologist whose research on plesiosaurs has taken him around the globe in search of these prehistoric creatures, will give the talk beginning at 12:15 p.m. in the Art Gallery at the Clay Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Most recently, O’Keefe was credited with the discovery of a new plesiosaur, Tatenectes laramiensis, a type of marine animal that lived during the late Jurassic age when large dinosaurs, including apatosaurus, stegosaurus and allosaurus, roamed the Earth. O’Keefe made the discovery in what is now the Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

His research was made possible by a $14,000 grant from National Geographic. O’Keefe will submit his study to National Geographic and, because the fossil was discovered on public lands, it will end up in the Smithsonian Institution.

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