During a press conference Friday, July 22 at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, NASA announced that Gale Crater will be the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory. Scheduled to launch in late 2011 and arrive at Mars in August 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that will assess the planet’s “habitability”—if it ever was, or is today, an environment able to support microbial life. [...more]
Puffer fish (Tetraodontidae) are masters of self-defense. When threatened they blow up like a balloon. Not only does this make them harder to swallow, but some puffer fish have sharp spines covering their body. If a predator does take a bite some species have powerful neurotoxins in their flesh and organs. Under carefully controlled circumstances, [...] [...more]
The pendant took Grand Prize in the National Saul Bell Design Competition in 2008 and features a beautiful 3.76-ct pink tourmaline from Nigeria. [...more]
Funded by BP through the Florida Institute of Oceanography, the scientists will make the 10-day trip aboard the institute’s 115-foot research vessel. The divers, scientists and photographers will document hard bottoms of Florida, from the Keys to the Panhandle, to gain a better understanding of these sponge- and coral-dominated communities [...more]
The male’s fluke design helps it overcome the drag caused by their long tusks, the scientists determined. The female’s fluke design gives them increased speed for diving while foraging. [...more]
For the first time researchers from the Smithsonian, South Dakota State University and the University of Nebraska described the immature stages of the switchgrass moth, first collected in Denver in 1910. [...more]
This circa 1910 Yup'ik mask from Good News Bay, Alaska--made of driftwood, baleen, feathers, paint and cotton twine--is part of "Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian," an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, opening Saturday, Oct. 23. [...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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