Skip to main content Skip to main navigation Skip to page-level navigation Go to the Disability Resource Centre Website Go to the DRC Booking Accommodation Portal Go to the Inclusive Technology Lab Website
The University of British Columbia
UBC - A Place of Mind
The University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
UBC Okanagan News
  • Research
  • People
    • Student Profile
    • Faculty Profile
    • Alumni Spotlight
  • Campus Life
    • Campus News
    • Student Life
    • Teaching & Learning
  • Community Engagement
  • About the Collection
    • Stories for Media
  • UBCO Events
  • Search All Stories
Home / 2014 / October / 08 / Have the Alberta Badlands changed since the day of the dinosaur?
Teaching & Learning

Have the Alberta Badlands changed since the day of the dinosaur?

October 8, 2014

UBC professor demonstrates why the landscape is a forever-changing fabric

UBC Assoc. Prof. Rob Young stands beside the skeleton of a short-faced bear, an extinct carnivore that is known as an ice age super predator. Young is giving a public lecture about post-dinosaur landscape erosion in the Alberta Badlands on October 15.

UBC Assoc. Prof. Rob Young stands beside the skeleton of a short-faced bear, an extinct carnivore that is known as an ice age super predator. Young is giving a public lecture about post-dinosaur landscape erosion in the Alberta Badlands on October 15.

What: Post-dinosaur landscape evolution of the Western Interior
Who: UBC Assoc. Prof Rob Young
When: Wednesday, October 15, at 3:30 p.m.
Where: SCI 374, Science Building, 1177 Research Road, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna

When we drive across the prairies, the trip seems interminable and the landscape unchanging. Seeing statues and depictions of dinosaurs amongst the badlands of southern Alberta, there’s a great temptation to think that nothing has changed for a very long time.

UBC Assoc. Prof. Rob Young says if that’s what you think, then you’re wrong.

Young, who teaches in the Earth and Environmental Sciences & Physical Geography Unit in the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, researches the vast changes the region has experienced since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Although the landscape suggests the scale of those changes, Young looks at the record of fluvial erosion, along with mammalian fossils incorporated into fluvial deposits, to help decipher the rates of landscape formation. There are indications that nearly a kilometre of sediment has been removed, at a rate that increased over the last several million years, and then slowed over the last two million years.

Mechanisms that explain some of the rate changes can be inferred, but some are only speculative. Join Young as he explains his research and why it’s important to keep track of changing landscapes.

Young’s presentation takes place Wednesday, October 15, at 3:30 p.m. in Room SCI 374, Science Building, 1177 Research Road on UBC’s campus. This event is part of the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences Unit 7 Seminar Series. It is free and open to the public. Pay parking is available on campus.

–30–

Media Contact

Patty Wellborn
Media Relations Strategist
University Relations

The University of British Columbia
Okanagan campus
Tel: 250 317 0293
E-mail: patty.wellborn@ubc.ca

Content type: Media Advisory
More content from: Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences (prior July 2020)

Trending Stories

  • UBCO Downtown
  • UBCO celebrates the graduates of 2022
  • Gold-medal tennis player, human rights activist win UBCO honours
  • Bold new plans unveiled for UBCO Downtown
  • UBCO researchers change the game when it comes to ...
All Stories
Contact Media Relations

About UBC Okanagan

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

Discover more about UBC Okanagan

Find a Program Admissions Book a Tour UBCO Facts
UBC Okanagan Campus News, University Relations

Innovation Precinct Annexation 1 (IA1)
3505 Spectrum Court
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 2Z1

We respectfully acknowledge the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples, in whose traditional, ancestral, unceded territory UBC Okanagan is situated.

 

Search all stories

Subscribe to receive news by email

Visit UBC's Vancouver news room

Global and Admin Messages

News

Okanagan Campus

UBC Okanagan News
Okanagan Campus
3333 University Way
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 1V7
Find us on
  
Back to top
The University of British Columbia
  • Emergency Procedures |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Copyright |
  • Accessibility