Life history recorded in bones and teeth

LIFE HISTORY RECORDED IN BONES AND TEETH

Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, Caitlin Rabe, Nadia Teixeira, Fay-Yaad Toefy, University of Cape Town

Monday 20–Friday 24 January  11.15 am  COURSE FEES R550; Staff and students R275

In this series of five lectures, we will demonstrate how bones and teeth of animals record various aspects of their life history. This is particularly important for deciphering the biology of animals that have been dead for a few years up to millions of years, and of which we know virtually nothing. Anatomical studies and biological signals recorded within their bones allow us to extract information about how they grew, how old they were, whether they migrated or whether they endured disease. Through a series of case studies, we will show how we garner this information from the bones and teeth of a range of different living and fossil animals.

Lecture titles

Setting the stage: insights from the hard parts of skeletons Prof Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan
What bones of a small burrowing mammal-like reptile from the Karoo basin reveals Caitlin Rabe
Gigantism and the growth dynamics of sauropodomorph dinosaurs Fay-Yaad Toefy
Changes in Lystrosaurus skull shapes as they grow; what are the implications? Nadia Teixeira
What do the bones and teeth of a ~5 million-year-old fossil horse tell us? Prof Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan

Recommended reading

Chinsamy-Turan, A. 2017. The Forerunners of Mammals. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Chinsamy-Turan, A. 2014. Fossils for Africa. South Africa: Cambridge University Press.

Chinsamy-Turan, A. 2021. Dinosaurs of Africa. South Africa: PenguinRandomHouse.

Chinsamy-Turan, A. 2021. Dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. South Africa: Dorling Kindersley.

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Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan is a palaeobiologist in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town. She is a global expert on the microscopic structure of the bones of extinct and extant vertebrates. Her work has been recognized by several highly acclaimed awards In 2005 she also won the "Distinguished Women Scientist Award" from the South African Department of Science and Technology, and in In 2013 she was awarded The World Academy of Science’s (TWAS), sub-saharan prize for the Popularisation of Science. Professor Chinsamy-Turan has published extensively - both in international scientific journals as well as in the popular press

She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, the University of Cape Town and The Word Academy of Sciences. She has published extensively in high-ranking international scientific journals, and she has an H-index of 50.

In addition, she has authored two academic books, The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone (Johns Hopkins University Press, USA, 2005) and "The Forerunners of Mammals: Radiation. Histology. Biology" (Indiana University Press, USA, 2012).