Home / 2011 / October

• 8 strange but true spider facts

  In zoology / 28 October 2011 / 4 comments

  

  In honor of Halloween, Michael Miller, keeper in the National Zoological Park’s Invertebrate Exhibit, shares a few of his favorite “strange-but-true” spider facts.

   

• Ancient whales

  In marine science, paleontology, Science Spotlight / 28 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  This illustration by Carl Buell depicts Ocucajea picklingi (center) and Supayacetus muizoni (bottom), two ancient whales that lived off the Peruvian coast during the Eocene, between 56-34 million years ago.  At top is an unnamed...

   

• Siemens donates SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner to National Museum of Natural History

  In anthropology, conservation biology, materials science, New Acquisitions / 27 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  With the gift of a Siemens SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner from Siemens Healthcare, Smithsonian researchers are acquiring information about museum objects that is fundamentally changing the way scientists examine specimens

   

• New genetic evidence confirms coyote migration route to Virginia and hybridization with wolves

  In conservation biology, zoology / 26 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  In a new study researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics used DNA from coyote scat (feces) to trace the route that led some of the animals to colonize in Northern Virginia.

   

• Frigid water cloud may be source of water delivered to dry planets by comets

  In astrophysics / 24 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  For the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that’s cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets.

   

• Complete evolutionary tree of the Hawaiian honeycreepers traced by Smithsonian scientists, collaborators

  In zoology / 20 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  Smithsonian scientists and collaborators have determined the evolutionary family tree for one of the most strikingly diverse and endangered bird families in the world, the Hawaiian honeycreepers.

   

• Two closely related bee species discovered far apart in Panama and northern Colombia

  In zoology / 20 October 2011 / 0 comments

  

  Our studies of the genetic relationships between these bees tells us that they originated in the Amazon about 22 million years ago and that they moved north into Central America before 3 million years ago.

   

• Tree dwelling animals were first to fly, study shows

  In conservation biology, zoology / 18 October 2011 / 1 comment

  

  Adding wings to a robotic bug helped it run faster and better, but was it enough to achieve takeoff?