January Monthly Meeting: Ryan McKellar

Amber, or fossilized resin, is a natural polymer that acts like a time capsule for palaeontologists. The chemistry of amber tells us a little about which groups of trees were present in the past, and what sorts of conditions they experienced. The insects, feathers, and plant fragments that are preserved in amber provide some of the most detailed glimpses of ancient life available. Together, these resources allow us to reconstruct ancient habitats, or trace the evolutionary pathways of plants and animals in unmatched detail. Amber is associated with coal deposits throughout Saskatchewan, providing multiple windows near the end-Cretaceous extinction event that annihilated dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. We study amber from coal seams and from dinosaur bonebeds, to obtain detailed information on ancient habitats and how they have changed. We are also able to study the fossils trapped in amber using the Canadian Light Source synchrotron in Saskatoon, generating…