SWOCC release – COOS BAY, OR – Southwestern Oregon Community College invites the community to join us on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at 6:00 pm, for “Ice Age Horses of the American West” with vertebrate paleontologist, Eric Scott. This is a free event; all ages are welcome. Coos County residents can join us in-person in the Umpqua Hall lecture room 184 on the Coos Campus, 1988 Newmark Ave., Coos Bay. Curry County residents can join us for a watch party in the Community Room on the Curry Campus, 96082 Lone Ranch Parkway, Brookings. For those not able to attend in person the lecture will be streamed live on the College’s YouTube channel at: www.youtube.com/@southwesternOR/streams. Southwestern’s Professor of Geology, Dr. Win McLaughlin welcomes Eric Scott, a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in extinct Ice Age mammals, particularly horses and bison. Horses have a long history in the Americas before going extinct at the end of the ice ages… only to be brought back a few thousand years later! During the ice ages North America supported a diversity of fossil horses ranging across the landscape. Tune in to learn about these beasts in Oregon and elsewhere and what our rich fossil record can tell us about them. Scott studies the evolution and extinction of North American Pleistocene megafauna, with a focus on biogeography – particularly, how the geographic distribution of species can change through time, and how this can inform our understanding of Ice Age extinctions. He has worked throughout western North America as well as East Africa. He is Vice President and Principal Paleontologist of Cogstone Resource Management, Inc., and an adjunct lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino. He is emeritus Curator of Paleontology for the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, California, where he worked for 24 years. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles. For more information about the lecture series contact Dr. Win McLaughlin, Assistant Professor of Geology, at 541-888-7002, win.mclaughlin@socc.edu. For more information on upcoming lectures contact Krystal Hopper Meyers, STEAM Pathways Assistant, at 541-888-7416, or krystal.hopper@socc.edu. To learn more about STEM degrees at Southwestern visit: https://www.socc.edu/programs-classes/stem/.
