Augustana’s Center for Polar Studies to offer free lecture

On Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m., Dr. Stephen Hasiotis will present a lecture, “Lifting the Veil on the Permian-Triassic World in the Beardmore Glacier Region of Antarctica: What Trace Fossils Reveal about the Hidden Diversity of Life in Landscapes and Seascapes and the Record of the Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time,” in Room 102 of the Hanson Hall of Science (726 35th St.).

Dr. Hasiotis, a professor at University of Kansas in Lawrence, was featured in the NOVA documentary Arctic Dinosaurs. He leads the IBGS (IchnoBioGeoScience), a research group that studies the history of life through behavior, body fossils, and the biophysicochemical relationships recorded by trace fossils.

Trace fossils are impressions made by an organism, such as burrows, footprints and marks showing activities such as feeding. Dr. Hasiotis is interested in the distribution of trace fossils, the evolution of organism behavior and of continental ecosystems, the interpretation of past climates from paleosols, and effects of extinctions on soil biota and their recovery.

The lecture is sponsored by the Augustana Center for Polar Studies.

For more information, please contact Keri Rursch, director of public relations, at (309) 794-7721 or kerirursch@augustana.edu.