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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, NOVEMBER 10, 2019
Digging deep
Brooklyn professor aids extraordinary fossil fi nd
BY BEN VERDE
This guy rocks!
A Brooklyn College professor helped
unearth a treasure trove of fossils that
may help reveal essential secrets for understanding
life as we know it.
“This discovery has produced a lifetime
of fossils to work with,” said Stephen
Chester.
Chester — along with a team of paleontologists
and a group of Brooklyn graduate
students — recently published a research
paper on their fi ndings, which will help
scientists understand the critical time period
just following the extinction of the dinosaurs,
according to Chester.
“If you want to try to understand the
origin of the modern world that we live in,
this is one specifi c moment in time that is
really critical to understand,” he said.
The group of researchers made the extraordinary
discovery during an expedition
to Colorado in 2016, when they uncovered
stockpile of bones that was remarkably
intact and unblemish — compared to most
other fossils, which are just fragments of
animal remains, said Chester.
“Everyone was incredibly excited immediately,”
said Chester. “Even the students
here recognized the signifi cance of
this because they had been studying these
species mostly through teeth.”
Professor Stephen Chester Brooklyn College
One of Chester’s former Brooklyn College
students said the professor was always
eager to involve his students in the
hands-on work like this.
“He was defi nitely a huge mentor, he
was probably at this point the biggest infl
uence on my career,” said Karen Cuevas,
who is now pursuing a PhD in Anthropology.
“He’s the kind of person where if there
is any opportunity to involve his students
he’ll jump at it.”
Bed-Stuy smash
Minivan fatally strikes motorcyclist in bike lane
A minivan fatally crushed a biker in Bed-Stuy late Saturday
night. Photo by Paul Martinka
BY JESSICA PARKS
A motorist struck and killed
a motorcyclist as he maneuvered
down a bike lane in Bedford
Stuyvesant on Saturday
night.
The driver behind the wheel
of a minivan was turning left
on Ellery Street from Tompkins
Avenue at shortly before midnight,
when he smashed into
the biker — who was motoring
down the bike lane astride his
2015 Yamaha motorbike — and
pinned him beneath the van, according
to police.
First responders rushed the
unconscious motorcycle driver
to Bellevue Hospital, where doctors
pronounced him dead, according
to police reports.
No arrests have been made,
and the investigation remains
ongoing.
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