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Before we all assembled for the International Hadrosaur Symposium, we all probably thought we knew where our science was. At a minimum, that was what we came to Drumheller to report on. It was hadrosaur taxonomy, North American, Asian, South American, and European hadrosaurs, and ornithopod brains. It was also hadrosaur gigantism and age, hadrosaur jaws and herbivory, locomotor mechanics, taphonomy, integument, tracks, and various aspects of development. This was where we thought our discipline was as we began the symposium.

Eighty-eight percent of the symposium talks (n = 34 talks, 16 posters) fall within the categories discussed here (Braman et al., 2011). Most are taxonomic, phylogenetic, or biogeographic in scope. Another half-dozen or more pertain to functional morphology, growth, and taphonomy – a good sampling of the categories examined here (an acclaim delivered independently twice over – the organizers and I both got it right!).

Symposium percentages are all the same order of magnitude compared to those obtained for the decade of 2000–2010, but there are several differences. General taxonomic presentations at the symposium were nearly 25% fewer than from 2000–2010, phylogeny was 19% fewer, taphonomy was 15% fewer, biogeography was 28% fewer, paleoecology was 19% fewer, and faunistics was 13% fewer. Soft tissue remained approximately the same. Interestingly, functional morphology was 14% more and growth was 6% more than from the decade of 2000–2010. While it is tempting to assign significance to individual percentages, they are probably no more than sampling errors when comparing a very small number of symposium talks with the projected breakdown of categories for an entire decade.