ML137987
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Hans-Dieter Sues. Timecode In: 00:00:13. Timecode out: 00:41:59. Notes: Paleontology. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Dual-Channel Mono. NPR Radio Expeditions Dr. Hans Sues with Chris Joyce 12/15/98 Begins in mid conversation CJ 00:00:37 Have you found that things have changed? HS 00:00:38 Oh, very much so! I mean now I've been now in the business of university teaching for 15 years and things have changed really dramatically. The students now come in and they see this as a service industry. That they paid, they are paying customers and they demand customer satisfaction since that they want to be entertained and we find more for the introductory courses that you have to have a sort of entertaining quality. CJ 00:01:06 Do you think that's new? 00:01:07 HS 00:01:08 Well, yeah. Because in the past people were really, I've seen it over those 15 years. People were really more concerned with learning something that would advance their career but now, no. The attention spans have become so short. They were never really long but now they're even shorter. CJ 00:01:27 One word explanation for that, television. (Unrelated asides) CJ 00:02:37 Tell me a bit about what you do at Toronto. 00:02:39 HS 00:02:40 I'm a curator for The ---- Museum and also teach zoology at the university. CJ 00:02:51 You've done work all over¿ You switched from geology to biology. Is that what you have to do to do paleontology? 00:03:08 HS 00:03:10 Well you can¿ Since I started out in Europe I came to paleontology through geology rather than biology but my interests are more biological that's why when the chance came up I jumped all over it. CJ 00:03:23 What's your point of view on the century on paleontology. Give me a pocket history of this century and what we've learned about dinosaurs. 00:03:50 HS 00:03:50 See, dinosaurs only go back about 200 years. The actual formal naming of dinosaurs occurred in 1842 when it was realized that there were some very unusual large extinct reptiles out there that really didn't fit neatly into the classification based on the reptiles that are alive today. There were some things that were vaguely similar reptiles to crocodilians which are in some ways close relatives still. But there were some anatomical features that were more birdlike and you sort of had to¿ fearfully great reptiles which is where the name dinosaura comes from. After the sort of initial discovery of dinosaurs in Europe and Europe has never yielded that many dinosaur fossils compared to other regions of the world, the next big breakthrough of the 19th century was the opening of the American West and the discovery of just countless dinosaurs fossils. And it really, North America really put dinosaurs on the map. Basically you went through this sort of early founding period and then you went into what some people call the Heroic period which went into the1920's when you had big organized expeditions going into either territories that were the colonies of various countries or going into areas where people were really were just still trying to fill in the white spots on the map. From the famous North American Museum of Natural History Expeditions to the Gobi Desert which were then described actually as the new conquest of central Asia. But then starting in the 1930's, more or less coinciding with the Great Depression there just suddenly this sort of loss of interest in dinosaurs. And basically between 1930 and 1970 was a very quiet period. There were still a few people around the world describing new dinosaurs. Some really interesting efforts particularly in Asia to get dinosaur material. Like discoveries in China which showed us that China to this day, is one of the great treasure houses of dinosaur remains. But really was between 1930 and 1970 very little happene... (Notes truncated)
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- 17 Nov 2008 - Ben Brotman
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- 17 Nov 2008 - Ben Brotman
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- 17 Nov 2008 - Ben Brotman