The Sea Before Time

Diving into the Mysterious Origins of Ancient Marine Reptiles

Thursday, May 16 @ 5:30 – 6:30 pm

  Yale Peabody Museum , David Friend Hall


  • Talk
  • Research Spotlight
  • Hybrid (Virtual & In-person)

While dinosaurs dominated land and pterosaurs ruled the skies, giant marine reptiles swam the Earth’s oceans. These real-life sea monsters’ evolutionary origins remain some of the oldest unsolved mysteries in paleontology. Yale Ph.D. candidate Caleb Gordon will show us how a combination of classic paleontology methods, World War II naval statistics, and machine learning promises to solve these puzzles once and for all.

Caleb Gordon

Caleb Gordon is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale University. He studies how reptiles evolved to become the top predators of the food chain on land and in the water during the time of the dinosaurs. He grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Bowdoin College in 2018.


Event Location

Yale Peabody Museum

David Friend Hall