George O. Poinar Jr. | |
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| Born | (1936-04-25)April 25, 1936 (age 88) Washington, United States |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | entomologist |
| Institutions | University of California, BerkeleyOregon State University |
George O. Poinar Jr. (born April 25, 1936) is an Americanentomologist and writer. He is known for popularizing the idea of extractingDNA from insects fossilized inamber, an idea which received widespread attention when adapted byMichael Crichton for the book and movieJurassic Park.
Poinar earned aBS andMS atCornell University, and remained there for his doctoral studies, receiving a PhD inbiology in 1962. He spent many of his years of research atUniversity of California, Berkeley in the Department of Entomology, Division of Insect Pathology. There, and during travels around the globe, he performed research on the axenic culture of nematodes, nematode parasites of insects and the fossil records of insects and nematodes in amber.
In 1992 a team consisting of Poinar, his wife entomologistRoberta Poinar, his sonHendrik, and Dr. Raúl J. Cano ofCalifornia Polytechnic State University successfully extracted insect DNA from a Lebaneseweevil in amber that was 125 million years old, collected by Raif Milki in Lebanon. More recent studies ofancient DNA cast doubt on the DNA results, but not on the authenticity of the amber samples.[1]
In 1995, George andRoberta Poinar, a fellow researcher from Berkeley, moved to Oregon, where they opened theAmber Institute. Upon his move to Oregon he received a courtesy appointment to the Department of Entomology ofOregon State University.
In 2016, Poinar announced the discovery of a new plant species that is a 45-million-year-old relative of coffee he found in amber. NamedStrychnos electri, after the Greek word for amber (electron), the flowers represent the first-ever fossils of anasterid.[2]
In 2017, Poinar published a paper describing a fossilized flower and its tentativepollinator.[3] The paper describes a flower of an ancestralmilkweed plant, which was namedDiscoflorus neotropicus, and atermite carrying apollinium, all covered inDominican amber.
Poinar's son,Hendrik Poinar, is a genetics researcher in the Department of Anthropology atMcMaster University.[4]
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