Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology

University of Alberta via Coursera

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Details

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

12 weeks long, 15 hours worth of material
Sessions
Level

Beginner
Subtitles

Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, English, Spanish

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Found in

Biology Courses

Overview

Class Central Tips

Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology is a 12-lesson course teaching a comprehensive overview of non-avian dinosaurs. Topics covered: anatomy, eating, locomotion, growth, environmental and behavioral adaptations, origins and extinction. Lessons are delivered from museums, fossil-preparation labs and dig sites. Estimated workload: 3-5 hrs/week.

Syllabus

Appearance and Anatomy

This lesson covers the diversity in dinosaur appearances, and will be able to identify major features of the major groups of dinosaurs.

Death and Fossilization

This module describes how fossils form, how we interpret the taphonomy of skeletons and bonebeds, and looks at the possible biases taphonomic events may create in the fossil record.

Eating

This module looks at the variety of food types, feeding habits, and feeding adaptations amongst the major groups of dinosaurs.

Moving Around

This module helps students understand the general modes and styles of locomotion in the major dinosaur groups. It also describes general methods of evaluating hypotheses on locomotion.

Birth, Growth and Reproduction

This module provides a generalized life history of a dinosaur, from birth through adulthood, including reproduction. The student will be able to describe major techniques of evaluating growth stages and rates in dinosaurs.

Attack and Defense

Examines the behaviours and structures that may have served for attack or defence through the lifetime of a dinosaur.

What is a Species?

This module will teach the different ways of defining what a species is. Students will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different species concepts for different situations.

Evolution

This module will describe the basic theories of speciation, and discusses how how these different methods of speciation may have occurred, including both hypothetical and empirical examples.

Stratigraphy and Geologic Time

This method provides basic stratigraphic concepts and the scale of earth history. Students will understand the evolution of dinosaurs through time, including which groups evolved when and where.

Paleogeography and Plate Tectonics

This module presents the basic concepts in plate tectonics and the evolution of the earth’s surface.

Dinosaur Origins

This module will look at the evolution of dinosaurs from non-dinosaurian archosaurs.

Dinosaur Extinction

The module will examine the end-Cretaceous extinction event, and provide examples of vertebrate groups that both persisted and died out during the event.

Taught by

Philip Currie and Betsy Kruk

Reviews

4.9 rating, based on 138 Class Central reviews

4.9 rating at Coursera based on 3219 ratings

Start your review of Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology

Kinkin(li) @kiliti

Magic,maybe I need a dinosaur to turn a human,it is essential to study this animal and how to success to make this animal be myself image. After reading this content of this course,my comprehesion of english letters is hugely improving and have a lovely...

Magic,maybe I need a dinosaur to turn a human,it is essential to study this animal and how to success to make this animal be myself image.

After reading this content of this course,my comprehesion of english letters is hugely improving and have a lovely on this course,especially knowing that the clearly appearance and anatomy about a kind of a dinosaur,if can I change the dinosaur's appearance turn to a human or make it useful for me to live in a place better,if can I change its anatomy turn to another samples,for example,the anatomy of the avatar who is a role of the film.The anatomy of the dinosaur may be used as a role of other films,on my own imagination, the anatomy of the dinosaur may be healthier by my study on how to lengthen the span of life,and so on.
Sonal P Patel @sonal

This class is about dinosaurs and Paleobiology! I enjoyed taking this class, along with the class central cohort. This class introduces an exciting field of research taught by the world expert paleontologist -- Prof. Phillip Currey and his research...

This class is about dinosaurs and Paleobiology! I enjoyed taking this class, along with the class central cohort.

This class introduces an exciting field of research taught by the world expert paleontologist -- Prof. Phillip Currey and his research associates, from the University of Alberta. I never thought I would learn about dinosaurs from world experts, along with enthusiastic learners from around the world, and also get the opportunity to join an active cohort of like-minded learners from around the world organized by Class Central.

This class is suitable for cohort settings as well to learn by yourself to satisfy your curiosity about dinosaurs, how they lived, and also what the field of paleontology is like! There are many topics covered in this class and some of those are even related to our current times. So, this is a class for many types of learners. There is something interesting for everyone in this class!

This class was my first introduction to paleontology and I recommend this class to anyone interested in learning about this field of science, the history of dinosaurs, and having fun learning about a variety of dinosaurs, in general, that existed on earth!

A great class for lifelong learners on MOOCs!
Samantha Thompson @samisomsam

This class was a great overview of dinosaurs with engaging videos. I liked how the readings went along with the videos so it works for different styles of learning.
Donato Rossella @Jaqq

Donato Rossella completed this course, spending 15 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.

The course material is interesting for amateurs who wants to have a better understanding of dinosaurs and the videos are well done and interesting.

However, at times I found the course notes to be written poorly (with repetitive, over-simplified language and some mistakes here and there) and the forums looks somewhat empty to me.

I definitely recommend the course, because the material available is enough to understand the concept and gain a basic culture about that period.
JUNAYED AHMED SUNNY @solomadcoder

The is an awesome course. I teach a lot of Dinosaurs. Also I learn some few basics of biological science. The instructor and the media visualisation is very authentic and clear to understand. Thanks for such a great course.
@astígona @astigona

I was looking for a brief still deep introduction to the paleontologists field of study, and that's exactly what I found on this course! Thanks to the whole Alberta's amazing team!
Pat Bowden @pat

Well made and interesting course with links to various sites including a geological timeline and fossil viewer.
Jeffrey Chiou

Jeffrey Chiou completed this course, spending 2 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be very easy.

Great course! The lectures are very enjoyable to watch, much like watching nature documentaries. Overall the difficulty is extremely easy and requires minimal committment, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if you are a busy person. In addition, all the lectures are made available at the beginning of the course, so you can watch multiple week's worth of lectures at once if you want.

To get the most out of the course, I recommend reading the included class notes, which go into greater detail than the lectures and contain some wonderful diagrams and pictures.

The only (very minor) criticism I have is that difficulty of the in-lecture quizzes varies greatly and depends on prior knowledge.
Anonymous

Really good, digestible information to learn that sets a base line for paleontology. It is also a very small workload so anyone could fit it in. I personally finished half the class in one or two days and then procrastinated and started to finish it weekly...

Really good, digestible information to learn that sets a base line for paleontology. It is also a very small workload so anyone could fit it in. I personally finished half the class in one or two days and then procrastinated and started to finish it weekly by the time it caught up, so I know both ways of completing it are pretty good. Highly advise this course for any new paleo-geeks out there, and even if you already know most of this stuff, as I did, there is plenty of new little tidbits of information to latch onto. The format of the text and then the videos and then a small quiz is personally a little monotonous, but then again this is my first Coursera class so that may just be how it is normally. Still, I enjoyed it and would definitely advise it to other folks. Definitely a 4/5 for me.
Anonymous

It was a pleasure to learn from Phil Currie and Betsy Kruk. Alberta is such a rich resource for information about dinosaurs and knowing that a lot of the research is from local sites like Dinosaur Provincial Park made the material more relatable and interesting....

It was a pleasure to learn from Phil Currie and Betsy Kruk. Alberta is such a rich resource for information about dinosaurs and knowing that a lot of the research is from local sites like Dinosaur Provincial Park made the material more relatable and interesting. I think this course had a fantastic surveying structure, covering many topics from naming dinosaurs and classifying dinosaurs, to evolution, the Geologic Time Scale, and extinction. Many of us learned about and really got into dinosaurs as kids, but there is a gap lasting several years until we are given the chance to learn about dinosaurs again. I highly recommend this course for anyone who has ever been interested in dinosaurs; after this course, you can comment on the fact and fiction about dinosaurs (and pop culture)!
Anonymous

One of the best courses I have taken on Coursera. Very complete, fun and interactive lessons. I love the resources like the 3D fossil visualizer. Betsy is a great teacher, I will definitely take the rest of the University of Alberta paleobiology courses. Highly recommended. Thank you for your work!

Uno de los mejores cursos que he realizado en Coursera. Lecciones muy completas, divertidas e interactivas. Me encantan los recursos como el visualizador 3D de fósiles. Betsy es una profesora genial, sin duda tomaré el resto de cursos de paleobiología de la Universidad de Alberta. Muy recomendado. Gracias por vuestro trabajo!
Anonymous

I really enjoyed this class! I loved learning about dinosaurs and their relatives, and I look forward to more. The course material was presented very well, and I enjoyed the video portion and the handout portion. I did not realize how much information about dinosaurs and their relatives I was going to learn about, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I think my favorite part of the class (and paleontology overall) was learning about the skeletons of the dinosaurs and their relatives, as they contained much more evidence for life than I once thought. Thank you very much!

Michael A. Davis
Anonymous

This is an introductory level course that presents material clearly and succinctly. The written materials prepare one well for the lectures. The lectures are kept short and broken into small sections so that one can do a little at a time or binge watch, at one's own discretion. I would have appreciated a few more visual aids during the lectures, such as rocks showing the iridium layer, and pictures or skeletons of the various groups of dinosaurs.
Anonymous

Easy to understand and engaging lessons with mini-quizzes built into the lectures. The use of actual dinosaur bones and digging helped center it in the real-world, and the speaker and the guests were clearly very interested in the material. As someone with no knowledge of dinosaurs beforehand it was very easy to follow and understand. Highly recommend.
Anonymous

Absolutely fascinating 101 course to enhance the knowledge and understanding I already had from decades of watching documentaries ;) Betsy and Dr Currie were fantastic hosts and made the material easy to understand. It really was a great intro to higher learning paleontology and I'm looking forward to taking more courses from UofA.
Anonymous

This course was excellent. Easy but challenging enough to be interesting for beginners not too familiar with paleontology. I have now impressed even my 7 year old “dinosaur expert” grandson!
Well done and thanks for providing this opportunity for intellectual engagement.
Stephen D Swaney

Stephen D Swaney completed this course.

Great intro to dinosaur biology. Engaging lectures and some good discussion in the forums. Plus there are some 3D scans of dino fossils you can play with in your browser.

As one of the other reviewers implied, it is not a rigorous course, although they do go into some detail about dino anatomy. I thought it was perfect for a 100 level course. If UAlberta ever gives a follow-on, I am there!
John Smith

John Smith completed this course, spending 1 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be very easy.

I personally found this course to be far too basic. It is a very superficial introduction to and overview of dinosaurs that will not be very interesting to anyone with more than a passing interest in them. Having said that, the course was quite well done and would be perfect for someone who is just beginning to learn about dinosaurs.
Julian Doop

An excellent course! It has a very reasoneble lenght and contains a lot of interesting information, both for beginners and those that simply wish to learn more about their favorite subject.
Anonymous

Anonymous completed this course, spending 6 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.

I was initially nervous about taking this course given that I don't come from a scientific background but I was pleased to discover that I struggled much less than I thought I would. It is a wonderful overview and introduction to paleobiology and inspired me to look for more courses in the same arena.