Regular Monthly Februrary Meeting

Fossil Skin

The Dallas Paleontological Society will meet next on Wednesday, February 11th, at 7PM Central time, in the Boonesville Auditorium (Room H125) of the Ellison Miles Building (Building H) at Brookhaven Campus of Dallas College, 3939 Valley View Lane, Farmers Branch.  We are back at our traditional meeting place!  Randy De La Garza, currently a post-doctoral researcher at SMU, will speak on “Reawaking Leviathans: What Fossils Soft Tissues Tells Us About the Lives of Ancient Marine Reptiles”.

Randy earned a BS in Geology, with a minor in Biology, from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville in 2011.  He then worked internships at the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg and the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen, before returning to Sam Houston to earn a MS in Biology in 2018.  Randy then went to Lund University in Sweden, where he earned a PhD in Geobiosphere Science in 2022.  His advisor was Johan Lindgren, (who presented the Charles Finsley Memorial Lecture to DPS in 2013), and his dissertation is titled “Preservation of marine reptile soft parts: Reconstructing the life and death of ancient leviathans”.  He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Southern Methodist University.  Dr. Garza’s research interests are in molecular paleontology, taphonomy of lagerstätten (particularly preservation of soft tissues), and the paleobiology of Mesozoic marine vertebrates.

DPS meetings are free and open to the public, and anyone interested in science and fossils is invited.  Members can bring snacks and food to share, and the society provides bottled water.  Everyone can bring fossils to show off or for identification help.  The meeting will be streamed on Zoom at:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83096250920. If the link does not work, start Zoom and enter the meeting ID of 830 9625 0920, then wait for the host to let you in.  We will see you there

Please plan to attend February 11.

DPS