In this fun, accessible and informative book, ichthyologists Gene Helfman, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, and Bruce Collette, of the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, provide accurate, entertaining, and sometimes surprising answers to more than 100 common and not-so-common questions. [...more]
As a coastal archaeologist and expert in prehistoric and historic settlement sites in the Chesapeake Bay region, Darrin Lowery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and University of Deleware, is carefully watching the effects of coastal erosion and rising sea levels on coastal archaeological sites. [...more]
Jonathan Coddington, Curator of Spiders at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History describes how photography has transformed the study of arachnids. [...more]
Lodgepole pine drawn in 1898 by U.S. National Herbarium illustrator Frederick Andrew Walpole. [...more]
It takes a Tlingit artist up to 2,000 hours, or 83 days, to weave just one ceremonial robe. Not surprisingly, this art form is practiced by a dedicated few including Tlingit artists Teri Rofkar and Shelly Laws of Alaska. In their presentation for the Smithsonian Spotlight series hosted by the Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum, Rofkar and Laws discuss the methods and cultural significance of robes, spruce root baskets and more. For more information, go to http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/alaska.htm [...more]
When you’re caught under the mistletoe, the tradition is to kiss the person next to you. But this holiday season you may want to wow them first with some cool mistletoe facts from Smithsonian botanist Sylvia Orli. [...more]
“Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher ” is a Web site of the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives consisting of two fascinating journals kept by American anthropologist Alice Fletcher (1838-1923) during a six-week venture into Plains Indian territory in 1881. Drawings of the plains, Indian reservations, and her many campsites in eastern [...] [...more]
Members of the Human Origins Program team at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History describe why they love their job. [...more]
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.
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