The Quarterly CMM Fossil Club Meeting will begin at 1:30 p.m., followed by a FREE public lecture at 2:30 p.m.

Our guest speaker will be Dr. Dale Greenwalt, a Resident Research Associate in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian. He has been affiliated with that department since 2007. His work centers on the description of the amazing fossil insect fauna of the Coal Creek Member of the Middle Eocene Kishenehn Formation in northwestern Montana.

 His presentation is entitled:

The Purple Fossil 

Paleobiologists are finding ancient biomolecules—pigments, proteins, DNA and many others—that once functioned in living organisms, tens of millions of years ago, in the fossil record. Dr. Dale Greenwalt will provide examples of different types of ancient biomolecules and the insights they provide about the physiology, behavior, and the evolution of extinct organisms, many of which existed long before the age of dinosaurs. He will describe how ancient biomolecules dictated what colors dinosaurs exhibited in mating displays, how ancient viruses evolved to become more dangerous, and even how an intact ancient organism was brought back to life. The science of ancient biomolecules is opening a new window onto the evolution of life on Earth—you will never think of fossils in the same way again.