SOCIAL EVENTS
ICE BREAKER, August 20, 2017
The Ice Breaker Party will be held at the Natural History Museum, Vienna, Burgring 7/Maria-Theresien-Platz, 1010 Vienna.
Entrance at the museum starts only at 18:45. Start time will be 19:00 in the big dome hall. At the entrance, please provide your registration (name badge) or if you did not register yet - your (printed) confirmation of registration that has been sent to you by E-mail.
Pre-Registration starts at the conference site, Geozentrum UZA2 (main entrance), Althanstraße 14, 1090 Vienna, on Sunday, August 20, 13:00-18:00
Registration during the conference at the Geozentrum, UZA2, Althanstraße 14, 1090 Vienna:
Monday, August 21, 8:00 – 19:00
Tuesday, August 22, 8:00 – 19:00
Wednesday, August 23, 8:00 – 12:00
Thursday, August 24, 8:00 – 12:00
CONFERENCE DINNER, August 22, 2017
By invitation of the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, the conference dinner will be on Tuesday, August 22, 2017, at a typical Viennese Heurigen, the 10er Marie, Ottakringerstraße 222-224, 1160 Vienna. No special fee is to be paid.
PUBLIC LECTURE, August 23, 2017
A public lecture will be given by Professor Michael Benton (University of Bristol) on "Dinosaurs in Decline" at the conference site on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, Geozentrum UZA2, Althanstraße 14, 1090 Vienna, Lecture Room 8 (the same as during the conference). The lecture will start at 20:00.
DINOSAURS IN DECLINE
There has been a long-running debate about whether the dinosaurs died out gradually or suddenly. The consensus has been that dinosaurs continued at full force to the very end of the Cretaceous, when they were rapidly wiped out following the impact of an asteroid 66 million years ago. New analyses of the evolutionary tree of dinosaurs suggest that they were actually in decline for 40 myr before the end, and so the asteroid was just the final killer. Dinosaurs had been in decline for a long time, perhaps associated with the rise of new plants and animals, cooling climates, or the breakup of continents.