Archive | Research Topics

Caribbean box jellyfish now thriving in southern Florida

A box jellyfish from the Caribbean appears to have recently become established in the red mangroves of Florida near Boca Raton. [...more]

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New exhibition looks at fishes from the “Inside Out”

"X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out," is a new exhibition of striking x-rays that reveal the complex bone structure of fishes in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. [...more]

Featured, conservation biology, zoology Comments (0)

New Book: “Across Atlantic Ice : The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture”

Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence, this book persuasively links Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago. [...more]

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Five funky and 5 fun facts about fishes

A selection of fascinating facts about fishes from the new book "Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide" [...more]

Book Review, zoology Comments (1)

190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site discovered in South Africa

An excavation at a site in South Africa has unearthed the 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus–revealing significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behavior in early dinosaurs. [...more]

Research Topics, paleontology Comments (0)

Fungi-filled forests are critical if endangered orchids are to thrive

Older forests with just the right fungi may be secret to saving these vulnerable plants. [...more]

conservation biology Comments (0)

Ancient popcorn discovered in Peru

People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 2,000 years earlier than previously reported and before ceramic pottery was used there, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...more]

anthropology Comments (2)

Why did the tortoise cross the road? A recent study indicates few do.

Scientists studying genetic variation and gene flow in a population of tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) in California’s Mojave Desert, were surprised recently to discover that two roads built in the desert in the 1970s had a noticeable impact on the population’s genetic structure. [...more]

conservation biology, zoology Comments (0)

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This fossil represents a new genus and species of extinct aneuretopsychid, Jeholopsyche liaoningensis, recently described in a paper in the journal ZooKeys by Conrad Labandeira of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Dong Ren and ChungKun Shih of the College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing. The aneuretopsychidae are a family of long-proboscid insects that lived in Asia from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The paper documents the first formal record of fossil Aneuretopsychidae in China. The new fossils reveal previously unknown and detailed structure of the mouthparts, antennae, head, thorax, legs and abdomen of this distinctive insect lineage.

Smithsonian Science