Hohensalzburg fortress , a largest fully preserved medieval fortress in Salzburg, Austria sits atop a hill. It can be reached walking the zigzag path or by a funicular car departing from the foot of the hill in Festungsgasse. As you exit from the funicular you are led through a gift shop that sells amber jewelry and polished rocks and minerals both indigenous to the region.

Study of Biology, Taxonomy and Evolution have benefited immensely from the amber preserved fossils.
Because of this we have a valuable record of the organisms which lived in the Earth's past. Although considered a gem , amber is a wholly- organic material derived from the resin of extinct species of trees. Eventually when the trees died and over millions of years sank into the coal bed, the tree sap hardened and formed amber stones. Amber has been carved into beads for jewelry and ornaments. However, it is valued highly by the scientists for it's preservative properties. The resin overtime polymerizes and any living thing that got trapped in it is successfully preserved.
 
Modern scientists have collected valuable information about extinct species since amber fossils are three -dimensional with life - like colors and patterns. Even the internal structures of the cells may stay intact. Insects caught in amber resin have been found in active poses, along with their predators,  prey and  with internal and external parasites. Intact frogs, lizards, snake skins, hair, bones and blood of mammals, plants, leaves , spores and pollen , hair from dinosaurs called "dino fuzz", have been discovered in amber, opening to us a window into our primitive world of unknown genera of fossilized organisms.

Baltic amber is formed from a particular type of pine- Pinus succinifera and is called succinite. Geological knowledge of each fossil resin is important to their botanical classification. Even when the fossil resin comes from the same plants, it might be different since it got fossilized in different conditions. 
Also, in order to be more accurate a place name is also given to amber fossils such as Baltic amber, Siberian amber, Spain amber, Dominican amber or New Jersey amber etc.

Kochenite, from Kochental ( a valley in Tyrol, around Innsbruck, Austria) is another variety of Amber found here. Spider beetles, belonging to Genera Ptinus have been found in Baltic amber more than a century and half ago. The amber of this coniferous tree belonged to early Tertiary (about 70 million) years ago.

Lyme disease is caused by ticks carrying Lyme disease bacteria- Borrelia burgdorferi. We recently have gained new insight and information about the bacteria and it was found preserved in amber. In 2014, Oregon State University researchers working on amber samples from the Dominican Republic and discovered ancient ticks infected with the bacteria, remarkably similar to modern Borrelia.  Ticks were dated back to 15-20 million years and indicate that even our early ancestors had to deal with conditions similar to Lyme disease.

 Insects as old as 20 million years old believed to have roamed the earth alongside dinosaurs and before the ice age three million years ago have been found. Last year, researchers found fossilized tobacco in the northern Amazon establishing that the plant dates back to the Pleistocene Era, 2.5 million years ago and that it originated in northeastern Peru.

There is a controversy if DNA can be extracted from the fossilized organisms and compared with that of its modern day counterparts. This concept was the basis of the movie "Jurassic Park" where the idea of extracting dinosaur DNA from blood eaten by mosquito and cloning new dinosaurs was used. A 46 million year old fossilized mosquito found by an amateur fossil hunter in Montana contains the blood of an unknown ancient creature. Scientists used x-ray spectrometry and found the abdomen full of iron which is what you would expect from blood. With mass spectrometry,  the presence of heme, the compound that gives red blood cells their distinctive color and allows them to carry oxygen throughout the body was found. However,  it was not possible to say which creatures blood was preserved in the mosquito's abdomen. That's because the DNA degrades quickly to possibly survive 46 million years of being trapped in amber ( or stone). Assembling  a full genome from DNA fragments requires us to have an understanding of what the whole genome looks like and turning it into a living breathing animal would require putting that DNA into an ovum of a living species closely related to the mystery creature that we do not know about. 

With improvements and advances in techniques and technologies perhaps some day a Dino park may become a reality.

If you want to buy a real amber jewelry there are two tests for it. Real amber floats in salt water and if you touch a hot needle to the surface of amber bead the smell should be pine-like.

Discipline of Biomimicry takes its name from the Greek word "bios" meaning life and " mimesis" meaning to imitate. We can say this field is as old as life on earth, 3.8 billion years, as organisms have been fine tuning themselves since then. We have been observing, analyzing and problem solving by looking around us ever since we have stepped on this Earth. It is an inherent nature of the human mind. All things biotic or abiotic have been our muse.

This became even more prominent for me on my trip. Let me give some examples:

In the museums I visited, at all the amazing architecture I looked at, in paintings by various artists, even the royal china at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna I could see inspiration drawn from the natural world. The royal china  is painted with beautiful patterns of butterflies, flowers, fish, lobsters, hummingbirds, ducks, roosters , shells and coral. A collection of plates had Lantana aculeata , a perennial flower painted on them, Rosa indica is of course the most common preference on such items. Archduke Franz , an emperor of Vienna during 1820's actually took up gardening as a hobby since he liked Botany. His collection of dessert plates (96 pieces) had all sorts of beautiful flora and fauna. Now, these days we might not like to eat in such fancy plates but we still like to decorate our dinner tables with fresh flowers and fruits.

 At the BMW museum in Munich , I was delighted to find out that the radiator grille of the BMW cars is a double oval known as a kidney because it mimics the symmetrically placed pair of kidneys in our own bodies. More so in the older models than in the newer ones.

The archaeological findings- vessels, ornaments, tools  used by our ancestors, displayed at the Acropolis museum in Greece testify that mankind has learned many things from observing other species and adapting their needs accordingly.

Leonardo Da Vinci was a big proponent of learning from nature. His designs and sketches that led to numerous inventions are closely linked to designs found in the natural world. Code Atlanticus is 1,119 pages and the contents are flight of birds to weaponry to designing musical instruments, mathematics and botany. In April this year I had an opportunity to see these wonderful drawings of  Da Vinci in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts. 

In Barcelona, Sagrada Familia is Gaudi's ultimate tribute to nature.

At the Viktualienmarket in Munich I saw the Durian plant fruit. Well, then found out that the Esplanade theater in Singapore has it's exterior or the building skin inspired by this fruit. Durian plant uses it's semi rigid pressurized skin to protect the seeds inside. Similarly, the buildings exterior is part of an elaborate shading system that adjusts throughout the day to allow sunlight in and protects the interiors from overheating.

The ladder model of double helix of the DNA as staircases in buildings is a popular design. There is one in the courtyard of the global accounting firm KPMG in Munich.

Photovoltaic systems, which harvest solar energy are mimicking the ways a leaf harvest energy by photosynthesis. Solar cells are able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen the same way leaves do trapping sunlight in the chlorophyll.

Biologists, researchers and other science professionals, artists, designers, engineers are all practitioners of Biomimicry. By observing nature and its inner workings we can make connections between human problems and natural solutions.

Nature is inspiring next generation of drones and robots after seeing how moths cope with turbulence. Robots are being designed with bird like grasping appendages.The developments are inspired by numerous other organisms such as bats, insects even flying snakes.

Researchers are certainly taking inspiration from all corners of the animal and plant kingdom.

My this experience makes me think that anybody who is an observer of nature can " biologize" a challenge, can query the natural world for inspiration, can evaluate, can apply the scientific methods to make sure that the final design mimics nature in form, in process and in ecosystem.

So, my dear students get ready to become a bio " mimic" king.

Check out the pictures from my trip that biomimic nature.