Program

This talk is a continuation of one that was given at a Kittitas Audubon chapter meeting about a year ago. (No worries if you didn’t see the last one: Kim promises that you won’t get lost!) The focus this time is on the birds that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the age of dinosaurs. Although most people imagine that birds first appeared as the “classic” dinosaurs were dying off, this is not true. Birds, true birds, but significantly different from today’s species first appeared about 160 million years ago and they co-existed with non-avian dinosaurs for almost 100 million years. We will discuss the features that characterized the very first birds and talk about the three main types of birds that dominated the landscape in the latter half of the dinosaur era. Kim, our speaker, will try to give you a sense of the diversity of early birds and the breadth of the ecological niches they filled. Finally, we will talk about which modern, extant orders of birds were alive back then, walking alongside other dinosaurs.

Kim Adelson was a professor of psychology for almost 30 years; she has won teaching awards at 3 different universities. Before switching to psychology so as to better study behavioral and intellectual evolution, she earned a master’s degree in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has been one of her avocations since she was a child. She is an avid bird watcher and is on the Board of, and Education Chair, at the South Sound Bird Alliance (formerly the Black Hills Audubon Society.) She is also the Southwest Regional Representative to the Audubon Washington Advisory Board.

Come join us on Thursday evening the 20th of November at 7pm for this talk, sure to reshape your ideas of how birds came to live with us! As always, we will be at Hal Holmes in Ellensburg, eager to see you and offer refreshments and comradeship on a frosty evening. This will be a zoom presentation, as Kim lives in Olympia, but she is an engaging speaker, well known throughout Washington, and readily answers any questions you may have. See you then!