This course is offered online via the free, easy-to-use Zoom program.
Before
Barney, before Jurassic Park, before Indiana Jones, dinosaurs captivated our imagination. Amazing recent
discoveries, new investigative methods, and the development of a powerful
conceptual tool have, in the last 30 years or so, created a resurgence of
dinosaur obsession. The course will
orient the student to the Age of Reptiles, introduce highlights of American
paleontology, review the evidence for the dinosaur-to-birds link, look at T.
Rex and his carnivorous cousins, and lament the extinction of these
magnificent Mesozoic creatures in the cataclysmic event that ushered in the Age
of Mammals.
After
a career in medicine, Steven Somkin returned
to his two real loves: playwriting and the ancient Greeks (his B.A. was in
philosophy with a particular emphasis on Plato). An award-winning playwright,
he has written 17 full length and a dozen short plays which have been produced
in New York City, the Berkshires, and regionally. He is a co-founder and
current leader of the now disbanded Greek Geeks, a group of intellectual
misfits devoted to reading the plays of ancient Greece. He also serves as a
docent in paleontology and biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural
History.
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Berkshires
OLLI: the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College Partners in education with Williams College, Bard College at Simon's Rock and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts 1350 West Street | Pittsfield, MA 01201 | 413.236.2190 | olli@berkshirecc.edu