Long before lions and elephants stalked the plains of Africa, dinosaurs ranged freely across the continent and the neighboring island of Madagascar. Dr. Forster will show slides and fossils of the latest dinosaur finds from these areas, including a spectacular new bird fossil that shows the close link between  dinosaurs and birds.

These sites will provide you with a lot of information about dinosaurs
and lead you to many other sites about dinosaurs.

As they travel through the Earth, earthquake waves provide important clues to the behavior of minerals at great depth. Mineral physics experiments at high pressures and temperatures provide the code to unravel these clues and to arrive at a 3-D picture of the chemical composition and mineralogy of these regions. In addition, these experiments provide information on the fate of minerals as they are subducted as part of the plate tectonics process.

Mineral Physics Institute Home Page
Ultrasonic Lab Stony Brook
Australian National University Petrophysics Group

Some scientists are questioning the notion that life on Earth emerged from an ocean containing the essential building blocks for life, the so called "prebiotic soup". The new point of view is that minerals may have played a crucial role in forming the essential building blocks for life and that life may have started on crystals. Prof. Schoonen will examine the old and new ideas and present some of his own work in this area of research.

Minerals and the Origin of Life