For this week only the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series has changed from Thursday, to Friday, February 8 at 11 a.m.
    Dr. Benoit Beauchamp, professor of geology at the University of Calgary, will present a talk entitled “Permian-Triassic mayhem: lead-up, catastrophe and aftermath of the Earth’s largest mass extinction viewed from Arctic Canada.”
    Nearly 245 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, the Earth witnessed the largest mass extinction in its history, where nearly 95 per cent of all species living at the time, both on land and in the seas, disappeared.
    Volcanic eruptions, meteoritic impacts, climate change, and a multitude of possible causes have been invoked to explain such a massive extinction event, but clear evidence for a cause has been hard to find until now.
    In his talk, Beauchamp will discuss new research based on extraordinary outcrops in the Canadian Arctic that give insight into the causes of the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. He will show how a perfect storm of detrimental conditions that include ocean acidification, massive volcanic eruptions and extreme global warming led to a natural catastrophe that took the Earth nearly 8 million years to recover from.

    The next federal election is not until 2015, however, the area Kevin Sorenson could be running in may look a lot different.
     The Electoral Boundaries Commission, in order to make electoral divisions more representative of the population, has been charged with adding six more ridings to the province. In December, the final report was tabled in the House of Commons.
    “The good thing is, Alberta is getting more seats, that’s the positive,” Sorenson told The Mail. “When you see how Alberta has grown over the last 10 years, we are underrepresented, so to gain seats, that’s good.”
    Most of the additions are in the Queen Elizabeth II Highway corridor. This includes the proposed new ridings of Edmonton-Westaskiwin, Lethbridge, Red Deer Mountain View, Red Deer Wolf Creek, Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan and Sturgeon River.
    Under the proposal, the Crowfoot Riding would become the Battle River-Crowfoot Riding. While its geographical area may expand a bit, the population may drop. Even though the commission’s report is yet to be finalized, the new Battle River-Crowfoot Riding's south boundary appears to move north.
    To the north, the new Battle River-Crowfoot Riding will  take in Wainwright and Viking.
    Communities south of Drumheller, such as Rosebud, Rockyford, Standard, Hussar, Carbon to the west, and larger communities such as Strathmore and Chestermere are included in the new Bow River riding, which borders Calgary to the west, Battle River-Crowfoot to the north, and Medicine Hat to the east.
    However, as the report sits, Sorenson said it looks similar to the original riding he ran in.
    “It basically gives me my old constituency back that I had until 2004,” he said.
    He said currently there are about 128,000 residents in the riding. The estimated population of the riding under the proposal is about 107,000.
    “Until the final report is out we don’t know what the riding will look like. It goes before Parliament and the committees, and there still can be changes,” said Sorenson. 
    He adds that it is hard to see any change after all the numerous relationships he has built in the area.
    Sorenson knows some are proposing changes, and although the change may not be directly in the new Battle River-Crowfoot area, it could very well have an impact on the area.
    “These won’t take effect until the fall of 2015 and so I am just going to be focused on representing the riding of Crowfoot as we know it today,” said Sorenson.