Smithsonian scientists and colleagues, however, have recently found evidence that gymnosperm plants shared an intricate pollination relationship with scorpionfly insects 62 million years before flowering plants appear in fossil records.
The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies is hosting “Climate Change,” a three-day, free, education online conference Tuesday, Sept. 29 through Thursday, Oct. 1. This is the second in a series of Center for Educatin and...
A new Smithsonian study that examines 10 million years of the evolution of tiny coral-like organisms called cupuladriid bryzoans has revealed that some species of this organism lingered on earth for more than one million years after the event that ultimately caused their extinction: the rising of the Isthmus of Panama.
The fossil teeth of a 15- to 18-million-year-old three-toed browsing horse, Anchitherium clarencei, were recently discovered by scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Florida. They found the teeth during excavations of newly...
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama was recently given a collection of more than 25,000 different pollen grains and spores, each mounted on a microscope slide and labeled according to the plant that produced it. “The collection is worldwide in coverage with an emphasis on plants of the Americas,” explains collection donor Alan Graham, professor emeritus at Kent State University and curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
A recent study of dog bones excavated from archaeological sites on the Channel Islands of California has cast new light on the past ecology of the islands and the impact that domestic dogs–brought to the islands by Native Americans more than 6,000 years ago—may have once had on the islands’ animals and ecosystems.
For those who think that global warming is a 21st-century phenomenon, Scott Wing, a scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has news about the past.
Science Spotlight
