Curious Minds: The Story of Birds

Professor Steve Brusatte is back at the AK Bell Library on Friday 4 December, his third appearance in the Curious Minds series. This time he's talking about how birds evolved from raptor dinosaurs in the Jurassic, and he'll be drawing on his own work collecting fossils and naming new extinct species to tell the story. There's a book signing afterwards, so if you've got a copy of one of his books you've been meaning to get signed, this is your chance.

For those who haven't come across it, Curious Minds is a series of Friday evening lectures run by the Perthshire Society of Natural Science in partnership with Culture Perth & Kinross. It's now in its 11th season, and the whole thing is built around the theme 'Contemporary Science in Scotland'. Every year they bring in some of Scotland's top academics and researchers to explain their work to a general audience, with a specific brief to avoid both dumbing it down and getting bogged down in excessive jargon. It's a good way to hear about high-level research without needing a PhD to follow it.

The series has covered a wide range of ground over the years — dinosaur fossils in Skye, the human genome, black holes, gravitational waves, the science of consciousness, the science behind your cup of coffee, and humanoid robotics. Brusatte is a well-known palaeontologist from Edinburgh University, and this is his third turn in the series, following Dinosaurs on Skye and a talk on the story of mammals. The Perthshire Society of Natural Science itself is one of the oldest scientific societies in Scotland.

The talk is at the Soutar Theatre within the AK Bell Library (2-8 York Place, Perth, PH2 8EP), starting at 19:30 and running for about 90 minutes. Tickets are £4.50 for PSNS members and £8 for non-members, both including the booking fee.