LITERATURE + LECTURES

The Houston Museum of Natural Science presents an HMNS Special Lecture entitled Archimedes, Atoms and Archaeopteryx, Monday, June 21, 6:30 p.m. Speaker:  Peter L. Larson, Black Hills Institute.

The Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx (pictured) has been examined by a team of scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California. Some of the equipment used to complete this analysis was developed specifically to study a palimpsest originally authored by Archimedes over two thousand years ago. A palimpsest is an animal hide parchment that was scrapped of the original text to reuse the parchment for a new manuscript. Exploring new methods of study was essential for this palimpsest, because the original document was erased and written over twice, all but obliterating the original Archimedes text and drawings.

In this investigation, the team utilized high energy x-rays to unlock the original and secondary chemistry of this 145 million year-old specimen of Archaeopteryx to map the distribution of certain elements over the surface of the fossil and its enclosing matrix. This technique makes it possible to unwind the series of events that leads to the preservation of fossils, and helps us to understand what really remains of the original organism. This technique also yields spectacular images, revealing a world that until now has remained hidden.

Peter L. Larson, paleontologist and geologist, is a founder and the president of Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota. Larson is on the research team investigating Archaeopteryx and other fossils at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.