Mystery, Mayhem, and the Life of Roxie Laybourne: Book Talk by Author Chris Sweeney

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Feathers can turn up in the unlikeliest of places: The nostrils of a murder victim, the engines of a crashed airliner, the drying machine lint trap of a former KKK Grand Dragon who tarred and feathered a Civil Rights activist. These are just some of the cases that the world's first forensic ornithologist, Roxie Laybourne, encountered during her storied and at times tumultuous career within the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Using nothing but her microscope and the museum’s massive collection of birds, Roxie pioneered methods for turning shredded fragments of feathers into accurate species identifications.

In this lecture, Chris Sweeney, author of "The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne," will explore the history of this unusual and utterly consequential field of science and tell the story of the enigmatic woman who pioneered it.

Come see specimens from the University of Massachusetts Natural History Collections! Free and open to the public.