Mike Everhart, adjunct paleontologist with Fort Hays State University's Sternberg Museum of Natural History, is taking High Plains Public Radio's High Plains History series back a hundred million years.
In 13 episodes that began May 6 on HPPR, Garden City, Everhart, creator of Oceans of Kansas, takes listeners back to a time when Kansas, like all of what is now the interior United States, was a vast sea filled with gigantic reptiles that rivaled such top-of-the-food-chain land predators (such as Tyrannosaurus Rex) of the same period.
The four-minute episodes air Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. during "High Plains Morning" and on Saturdays at 12:30 p.m. during "Western Swing and Other Things."
Dubbed "Ancient High Plains History," these segments tell the stories not only of the prehistoric monsters that filled the Cretaceous Sea but also stories of the scientists who faced danger to uncover the sea history that lies beneath the Kansas plains.
Everhart has collected fossils for more than 30 years and his written two books about his work, "Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep" and "Oceans of Kansas: Natural History of the Western Interior Sea." His work inspired the National Geographic IMax film "Sea Monsters," and he served as National Geographic's lead consultant on the film.
Links to podcasts of the program may be found at www.hppr.org/hph.html. High Plains Public Radio, www.hppr.org, is also streamed on the Web