Strange deep sea creatures confirmed as three new species
DNA analysis has established that creatures captured during a voyage to the mid-Atlantic are members of the Torquaratoridae; a recently discovered family of acorn worms.
Science Spotlight
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Smithsonian Anthropologist Bruce Smith talks turkey…squash, potatoes and corn
Smithsonian Anthropologist Bruce Smith shares the origins of some favorite Thanksgiving foods.
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Peruvian mummy as seen by a SOMATOM Emotion 6CT scanner
Viewed from inside the SOMATOM Emotion 6CT scanner used at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the skeleton and internal organs of this well-preserved Peruvian mummy can now be studied non-destructively and non-invasively. CT...
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Details of ancient shark attack preserved in fossil whale bone
A fragment of whale rib found in a North Carolina strip mine is offering scientists a rare glimpse at the interactions between prehistoric sharks and whales some 3- to 4- million years ago during the Pliocene.
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Research team to explore how microbial diversity defends against disease
Researchers who will study the microbial communities living on the skins of frogs that are surviving the fungal scourge of chytridiomycosis, deadly to the frogs.
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City lights could reveal E.T. civilization
In a new paper, Avi Loeb, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Edwin Turner, Princeton University, suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights.
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Air pollution is fertilizing tropical forests
Studies at two remote Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory sites in Panama and Thailand show the first evidence of long-term effects of nitrogen pollution in tropical trees.
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New DNA study suggests coral reef biodiversity is seriously underestimated
The first DNA barcoding survey of crustaceans living on samples of dead coral taken from the Indian, Pacific and Caribbean oceans suggests that the diversity of organisms living on the world’s coral reefs—one of the most endangered habitats on Earth—is seriously underestimated.
