DOES 200 MILLION YEARS AGO (MYA) MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU? PROBABLY NOT, when many of us often have trouble remembering where we put the car keys five minutes ago.

But 200 MYA makes perfect sense to University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) paleontologist Robert Reisz. In fact, he believes the fossils of extinct species he studies have important lessons for preserving life on earth today.

At any given time, Reisz – who travels the world in search of important fossils – has a number of projects underway. “But occasionally, I get projects that I just can’t resist and I get diverted. This dinosaur is that kind.”

The dinosaur he is speaking about is a fossilized skull of one of the earliest dinosaurs, Coelophysis. During its heyday in the late Triassic Period (the first of three geological time periods – the Jurassic and Cretaceous are second and third – that constitute the Mesozoic Era, or the “Age of the Dinosaurs”), Coelophysis was a nine-foot-long, three-foot-high menace to society. Built for speed, it would tear around on two legs, using grasping claws and small, very sharp teeth to get its dinner. There is even speculation that the Coelophysis practiced cannibalism.

Despite its nasty reputation, Reisz treats his Coelophysis specimen – which lived in what we now call the State of New Mexico – with the warm attention of an adoring parent. And with good reason, he feels. “This exquisite skull belonged to a very early
theropod, the group of predatory dinosaurs that gave rise to birds. We know very little about these early forms. So this will be a pivotal piece of work, critical to the study of the dinosaur group that actually has living descendants.”

Reisz has built an impressive record in finding new fossils that shed light on the earliest stages of vertebrate evolution. He has contributed to the discovery of a bipedal reptile that predates dinosaurs by over 60 million years. He was also the lead researcher on a paper published in Nature in 2001 about a unique dental development in lungfish that has been conserved across 360 million years.

Reisz and his UTM research team – which includes research associate Diane Scott and scientific illustrator Kevin Dupuis – are now in the process of bringing their 200-million-year-old friend back to life. This involves finely detailed work in separating the actual fossil from the rock in which it is petrified (they use dental instruments to do so), analyzing the anatomy, then developing hand-drawn and computer-generated illustrations. The work will take about two years to complete.

“This project is part of the ongoing work by scientists and scholars around the world who share the goal of developing a better understanding of the history of life on our planet.”

In addition to creating new knowledge about evolutionary history, Reisz says that paleontology has direct benefits to the human species. “Studying extinct life forms increases our knowledge of the world. We humans have a better understanding of our place in the world because of fossils, a level of knowledge that can’t be gained in any other way. And this knowledge is an excellent tool to use in understanding what sustains life on earth – what, for example, to do in protecting the environment and how
climate affects life.” — Paul Fraumeni