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CORVALLIS - Robson Bonnichsen, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Oregon State University, will give a free public lecture on Sunday, March 31, at Portland State University.

The title of his talk is "Ice Age Peoples of the Willamette Valley." It will begin at 2 p.m. at PSU's Cramer Hall Room 53.

The event is sponsored by OSU's Center for the Study of the First Americans, the PSU biology department, the Pacific Northwest Museum of Natural History, and other local groups.

Bonnichsen has been at OSU since 1991, when the nationally recognized center moved to the Oregon State University campus from Maine. Among its missions is to conduct original research and synthesize research results from others around the world relating to the peopling of the Americas.

The OSU center gained national attention in 1994 when researchers at the university were able to extract DNA from a strand of human hair estimated to be more than 10,000 years old. The center since has established a DNA laboratory for archaeology.