Breaking Ground - Lindsay Zanno Trailblazes the Future of Paleontology by Stepping into the Past
If you were ever a child, which you probably were at one point – you likely had some level of obsession with dinosaurs. Gigantic, towering bird-lizards that, while not fire-breathing, were just as enthralling as any mystical dragon of folklore as they roamed the earth’s prehistoric landscape. Many of us were introduced to dinosaurs for the first time by programming from National Geographic – and now we can relive those moments of wonder and imagination thanks to National Geographic Live and Arts Commons Presents, at the upcoming show Lindsay Zanno: T. rex Rises on March 10 & 11 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall at Arts Commons.
While some of us left our preoccupation with these hulking beasts firmly in childhood, others – like Paleontologist Dr. Lindsay Zanno, have turned that love for history’s greatest predators into a full-time job that many would call a dream. Dr. Zanno has been fascinated with dinosaurs since childhood, and today she is one of the world’s leading experts on the evolution of Cretaceous dinosaurs. She spends several months each year on expedition, scouring the remote badlands of western North America in search of fossils.
While her current live show focuses on the pop-culturally immortalized T. rex, Dr. Zanno’s very first find was a much more placid creature that feasted only on plants. Described as an “animal with six feet of narial bony tubing wrapped up in a long head crest”, this bizarre dinosaur is believed to have used its giant head crest to communicate and amplify its hearing. Remains of this over nine-meter-long dinosaur have been previously found in Alberta, Canada – and could surely be a career-defining find for many paleontologists. This find only sparked Lindsay Zanno's hunger for discovery, which has grown into a rich body of work encompassing publications covering dozens of dinosaur species around the world.
Dr. Zanno brings the worlds of performance and natural history together in a show with a unique focus; a prehistoric climate crisis with drastic consequences that shaped the world in which the dinosaurs roamed. Join Arts Commons Presents for National Geographic Live’s Lindsay Zanno: T. rex Rises on March 10 & 11 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall at Arts Commons. Click to get your tickets today!
