University dinosaur expert, professor to appear on 'Animal Armageddon'

03/05/09 - While some people may have "skeletons in their closet," a University of Rhode Island professor of geosciences, David Fastovsky, has skeletons in his office.Fastovsky, a paleontologist from Wakefield, is a leading expert on the mass extinction of dinosaurs.

He said he loves working at URI, but also enjoys traveling to areas such as Arizona, Montana, Mexico and Mongolia.

"I definitely like going to exotic places and seeing exotic things," Fastovsky said. "Anytime I can get out, that's good."

He said his job is composed of 50 percent research and 50 percent teaching.

"It's better for the students to hear [facts] from the people who are actually doing [research]," Fastovsky said.

Fastovsky has been researching the extinction of dinosaurs in Mexico since 1986. In 2005, he taught a course in sedimentology at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) while on sabbatical. During that time, he wrote papers on dinosaur extinction and published the book, "The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs." This year, he published "Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History," the textbook used in his GEO 102 course.

In 2008, National Geographic funded his research on dinosaurs.

"We found some dinosaur bones in a place where nobody knew anything about anything," Fastovsky said. "Our job was to try to learn something about what the ancient environment was where those bones were exposed."

With his colleagues, he was able to determine dinosaurs became extinct approximately 65 million years ago.

"We have steadily built up the data until it was pretty much incontrovertible," Fastovsky said.

Fastovsky said his fellow researchers help him work out ideas while in the field

In 1991, Fastovsky and his colleagues published "the first nail in the coffin" on dinosaur extinction in "Science," a widely-known scientific journal.

"This is not the sort of thing that you just say and then forget about it," Fastovsky said. "You're making a major scientific conclusion which has serious ramifications for all kinds of things, so you publish it in different journals, add evidence over the years and continue to either falsify it or fail to falsify it. Eventually, it becomes a pretty robust idea."

In December 2008, Fastovsky and his colleagues discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs with embryos in them in Mongolia.

"That was a good day, that was a really good day," Fastovsky said. "When I collected them and I looked at them, I could see little bones sticking out between the two layers of eggshell."

According to Fastovsky, the species of the embryos was later identified as Oviraptors.

The professor is currently continuing his research on the extinction and evolution of the dinosaurs. In Mongolia for example, he studied the Protoceritops and concluded that it existed in an environment similar to today's Sahara.

Last August, Fastovsky flew to Digital Ranch in Montana for the filming of a new Animal Planet mini-TV series on dinosaurs called "Animal Armegeddon." The first episode of the series aired last Thursday and the second will run tonight at 9 p.m.

In 1980, scientists found a layer of iridium, an element commonly associated with space matter in the soil layer near the Gulf of Mexico. According to the first episode of the series, this indicated a massive asteroid struck the Earth, supporting Fastovsky's and his colleagues' conclusion pertaining to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Though the URI professor was quoted on some of the outcomes of his research, he said Animal Planet did not directly focus on his entire field studies.

"The program called me up to interview me, but the program had no relationship to my research at all," Fastovsky said. "I'm glad they were interested, but it really doesn't have much to do with my day-to-day sort of events. My day-to-day events are like any other professor here. I'm here doing research."

Fastovsky has worked at URI for the past 23 years and currently teaches GEO 102, GEO 103, GEO 204, GEO 555, a course on evolution and a course on advanced evolutionary biology.

In his spare time, Fastovsky is a musician. Throughout college, he played the viola and was invited to play wedding gigs. He spent a year in Australia performing. About 5-6 years ago he was hired by a bunch of economists to perform once again. He also used to play Viola in the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, however, after 31 years of playing his string instrument, he decided to return to his passion for the French Horn. He is currently a member of Quintessentials, a wind quintet that plays regularly and is composed of residents from all over the state. Fastovsky now plays his French Horn in the Philharmonic Orchestra.