Of dinosaurs and mathematics
Thursday, June 5, 2014 - 08:41
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Dinosaurs and mathematics do not seem like an obvious pair, but for Professor Robert Sinclair and his Mathematical Biology Unit, they are a logical match. Sinclair was part of a team that recently published a paper in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology that reexamined the classification of a dinosaur bone found in Australia. Using his expertise in mathematics, Sinclair was able to help the paleontologists reclassify a single arm bone as belonging to a dinosaur family previously believed not to have existed in the Southern Hemisphere. Sinclair contributed to an international, interdisciplinary collaboration that may lead to revisions in the current thinking about how continents were connected in the ancient world.