Over more than 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, powered flight is only known to have evolved three times—in bats, pterosaurs, and of course, in birds. This talk explores the Mesozoic origin of avian flight from the perspective of the dinosaurian brain. Fossil reconstructions will be integrated with advanced imaging to test hypotheses on how the brain of theropods met the sensory and motor changes of this rare and radical behavioral innovation.
Amy Balanoff is an assistant professor in the Center for Functional Anatomy & Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She holds appointments in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Research in her lab focuses on the interplay between behavioral innovation with anatomical structure and function during the transition from the primarily two-dimensional environment of ground-dwelling dinosaurs to the three- dimensional environment experienced by most birds today.
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NHSM believes there should be no barriers to education. If you can’t pay, that’s okay. If you can pay, great. If you can pay more, please do, so this kind of education can continue.