NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 1 - Fall 2005

Friends of the Library--T. rex To Headline 2005 Fall Luncheon

By Anne Schnatter

The Friends of the Library’s 2005 Fall Luncheon will feature Mary Schweitzer, the acclaimed paleontologist who has a joint appointment with NC State’s Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences and the North Carolina Museum of Natural History. The luncheon will be held on October 24, 2005, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m., in NC State’s McKimmon Center.

Schweitzer has received international attention for her work with colleagues in Montana, where they discovered that the femur of a sixty-eight-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex contained soft tissue that revealed microscopic interior structures resembling blood vessels as well as cells. Schweitzer also discovered specialized bone tissue that revealed the gender of the dinosaur, which was a young female producing eggs when she died. In a paper published in the journal Science, Schweitzer and her technician Jennifer Wittmeyer, along with colleagues at Montana State University, discussed the presence of the bone tissue that provided evidence of the dinosaur’s gender and a connection between the extinct dinosaurs and living birds, specifically flightless birds such as ostriches and emus.

To learn more about this fascinating research, plan to attend the Fall Luncheon. During the luncheon, the library will also honor a university faculty member with its annual NCSU Libraries Faculty Award. For ticket information, please call the Friends office at (919) 515-2841.