This 1889 scientific illustration of a vampire squid from Smithsonian celebrates Halloween. The squid’s jet-black skin, the caped appearance of the webbing between its arms and eyes that appear red under some light conditions are...
This copepod Aleutha potter,officially named and described in 2007, is found in Potter Cove, King George Island, Antarctica. Copepod (Kope = Greek for “oar” Podos = Greek for “foot”) means oar-footed, referring to the pair of...
JoVonn Hill, a research associate with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station at Mississippi State University, recently borrowed 32,000 grasshoppers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for study. Many of the specimens...
A bubbling cauldron of star birth is highlighted in this new image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope of the Cygnus-X star-forming region some 4,600 light-years from Earth. It contains 10 times as much gas as...
Two Cuban crocodiles were born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo on July 6 and 14 and they are among the most genetically valuable in the Cuban crocodile population under human care. The Zoo has not...
This image shows a 3-D scan of the type specimen of Odobenocetops, the walrus whale, in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The skull of this fossil dolphin relative was collected in 2011 in...
Michael Faraday (1791-1867), a chemist and physicist at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, discovered electromagnetic induction at the same time as, but independently of, Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. This...
Three weeks after their unconventional and rocky entrance into the world, two 3-week-old cheetahs were transported May 18 to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in good health, thanks to the hard work and swift actions of...
Science Spotlight
