Kenneth Lacovara, Ph.D., the paleontologist who discovered the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth, will deliver the Fall 2026 Distinguished Scientist Lecture, “Why Dinosaurs Matter,” at Trinity University on Thursday, November 12, at 4:30 p.m. in Chapman Auditorium. The public is invited. More details are available here.
In 2004, Lacovara and his team unearthed a 7-foot-long femur bone in Patagonia, on the southernmost tip of Argentina. The next year, the group discovered more bones that, over several years, revealed a titanosaur, estimated at over 85 feet long, more than two stories high at the shoulder, and weighing more than 65 tons. Lacovara named it Dreadnaughtus, meaning “afraid of nothing.”
These sauropods, with long, tapered tails, long necks, relatively small heads, and stocky bodies, lived at the end of the age of the dinosaurs. More than 5,000 miles away and 25 million years earlier, the blink of an eye in geological time, sauropods Sauroposeidon and Acrocanthosaurus were leaving tracks in Central Texas mud.
Besides being endlessly fascinating, dinosaurs provide clues to the environment that are relevant today, says Ben Surpless, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences at Trinity.
“In the geosciences we have this idea of actualism, which is that all of the physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes that happen now also happened in the past, so we can make observations now in order to interpret what we see in the past,” Surpless said. Likewise, major events in the past, like the extinction of the dinosaurs, can inform our current environment.
In a TED Talk, which has more than 4.4 million views, Lacovara explains that Dreadnaughts were alive when an asteroid crashed into the Earth, causing the fifth great extinction on the planet. Learning about what wiped out 75% of all living things holds clues for what Lacovara has called a current crisis, the sixth mass extinction event.
Studying the past, Lacovara said from the TED stage, provides perspective and humility. Dinosaurs couldn’t see their extinction coming. “We, on the other hand, do have a choice. The nature of the fossil record tells us that our place on this planet is both precarious and potentially fleeting.”
Hosting a prominent scientist and science communicator such as Lacovara is a boon to the San Antonio community, especially to Trinity’s campus, Surpless said, where more and more students are majoring in STEM fields.
Geoscientists commonly study processes that span millions of years, so it’s sometimes difficult for nonscientists to grasp the concept of deep time, Surpless said. Lacovara “is talking about something everybody knows (dinosaurs). I think that spurs interest in geosciences.”
Lacovara is the executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum at Rowan University in Mantua, New Jersey. He has also led or co-led excursions in China, the Gobi Desert, and Egypt. In 2017, he published the book Why Dinosaurs Matter. The late primatologist Jane Goodall, who spoke at Trinity in 2015, called it "a dinosaur book with a difference. In lyrical prose, he shows how an understanding of the past helps us to understand the present.”
The Trinity University Distinguished Scientist Lectures Series is made possible through an endowment by The Walter F. Brown Family of San Antonio. Trinity University affirms freedom of expression. Views expressed by speakers and participants before, during, and after speaking engagements do not represent or reflect the views of the university.
