Speaker Series is offering  two presentations at the Royal Tyrrell Museum this week.
    The March 16 session is a presentation by Dr. Takuya Konishi, University of Cincinnati, entitled “Sharing Under the Cretaceous Sea: Global Distribution Achieved by Halisaurine Mosasaurs Explained by a New Discovery from Japan.”
    Mosasaurs were large, flipper-bearing swimming lizards from the age of the last dinosaurs, about 100–66 million years ago.
    Out of this highly diverse assemblage, halisaurine mosasaurs were small and seemed less well adapted to life in water since they lacked the well-developed flippers and tail fin of their larger contemporaries. Yet these small mosasaurs became increasingly more common in the fossil record towards the end of the Cretaceous, indicating their evolutionary success alongside their larger, fast-swimming cousins.
    In his talk, Konishi will explain why a recently discovered skull from Japan sheds new light on halisaurine mosasaurs’ potential survival strategy: that halisaurines evolved a pair of large, forward-facing eyes that would have increased their ability to see in the dark, allowing them to hunt at night.
    The Friday, March 17 session is a presentation by Dr. Grant Zazula, Yukon Government, entitled Ice Age Mammals of the Frozen North.
    Since the earliest discoveries during the famed Klondike gold rush of 1898, scientists have ventured into the remote tundra and boreal forest of northwest Canada to study the fossils of woolly mammoths, giant beavers, arctic camels and their cohorts.
    This tradition of gold miners and palaeontologists working collaboratively continues today with the Yukon Government’s palaeontology program. The permafrost exposed by Yukon gold miners is an internationally renowned archive of arctic environmental change and major source of ice age vertebrates, including ancient DNA preserved in these fossil bones.
    In his talk, Zazula will explore how research on the ice age record of Yukon is leading to valuable insights into how ancient mammal communities responded to climate change in the geologically recent past and provides informative analogs for changes occurring in Canada’s north at present.
    The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. They are held every Thursday (and this week, Friday!) until April 27 at 11:00 a.m. in the Museum auditorium.

There aren't many as memorable on the ice as Tony Kollman, and now he is being inducted into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame.
This year's inductees were announced Wednesday March 15. Kollman is in a 2017 class that includes Glen Sather and the Sutter family.
Few have matched the legacy left by Tony Kollman on amateur hockey in Alberta in the 1960s and 70s.
In another era, he might have been a star at the professional level. For Tony, his profession as a hospital administrator meant that his hockey skills would be largely on display in Alberta, with appearances at the national and international levels.
The native of Major, SK, Tony’s career started in Saskatchewan with Regina (SJHL) and Kerrobert (SIHL) before moving to Alberta. He played one year with the Hanna Hornets (MVP, leading scorer) before moving to the Drumheller Miners for what would be an 11-year career (1959-60 to 1970-71). His playing career finished with two seasons with the Senior A Calgary Stampeders.
It was during that prosperous decade with Drumheller that Kollman starred. Drumheller won four Alberta Senior Hockey championships. The capstone was the 1965-66 season, when Drumheller won the Allan Cup (with Tony leading the team in scoring), returning the trophy to Alberta for the first time in 18 years. Then, in 1966-67, the team participated in a European Tour and the AhearneCup in Sweden. During his career in Drumheller, he was named Team MVP nine times, led the team in total points eight times, and penalty minutes six times.
Tony also was the most sought-after player in the 1960s by other teams in Alberta looking to bolster their ranks in the playoffs or overseas tours. He was an addition to teams such as the Olds Elks (1960-61 Western Canadian Intermediate A champions), and Lacombe Rockets (Ahearne Cup, European tour, 1964-65).
Tony did get his chance to play at the professional level, joining the Salt Lake Golden Eagles (5 games, 1970-71), and playing a key role with the Roanoke Valley Rebels (1972-73), a farm team of the new World Hockey Association’s Philadelphia Blazers. Tony played the final nine games of the regular season, and 12 playoff games, totaling 27 points for Roanoke Valley. But his real profession came calling, and he had to return to Alberta with the league final tied 1-1. Roanoke lost in five games.
Not only was Tony a star player, after his major playing days were over he stayed involved in hockey and helped introduce Junior A hockey to east-central Alberta, as co-owner of the Drumheller Falcons. The Falcons operated from 1971-82.
The induction ceremony is on Sunday July 23.