Grad student finds a new saber-toothed species in a museum collection
There's a new saber-toothed predator in town—and it's been hiding in plain sight.
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 1, 2021
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1528
News tagged with museum specimens
DNA reveals the evolutionary history of museum specimens
Museum specimens held in natural history collections around the world represent a wealth of underutilized genetic information due to the poor state of preservation of the DNA, which often makes it difficult to sequence. An ...
Evolution
Jul 13, 2021
0
14
Fish have been swallowing microplastics since the 1950s
Forget diamonds—plastic is forever. It takes decades, or even centuries, for plastic to break down, and nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists in some form today. We've known for a while that big pieces of ...
Ecology
Apr 29, 2021
0
231
Good news for honey bees, according to 150-year-old museum specimens
The past several decades have been hard on Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee. Originally native to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Western honey bees have spread worldwide thanks to the nutritional and medicinal ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 8, 2020
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209
Remote Hawaiian island harbors last land snails of their kind
The island of Nihoa, a slice of jagged rock that juts out of the Pacific Ocean, is the sole refuge for a rediscovered species of native Hawaiian land snail previously presumed to be extinct.
Ecology
Dec 7, 2020
0
14
Shining a (UV) light on the glow-in-the-dark platypus
The fur of the platypus—an Australian species threatened with extinction—glows green under ultraviolet light, a new study finds. This is the first observation of biofluorescence in an egg-laying mammal (monotreme), suggesting ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 29, 2020
0
5
DNA extracted in museum samples can reveal genetic secrets
DNA in preserved museum specimens can allow scientists to explore the history of species and humanities impact on the ecosystem, but samples are typically preserved in formaldehyde which can damage DNA and make very difficult ...
Archaeology
Jan 31, 2020
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109
On the edge between science and art: Historical biodiversity data from Japanese 'gyotaku'
Historical biodiversity data is being obtained from museum specimens, literature, classic monographs and old photographs, yet those sources can be damaged, lost or not completely adequate. That brings us to the need of finding ...
Ecology
Jan 20, 2020
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56
Plant specimens provide powerful data about life in the Anthropocene
Researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Michigan State University report plant specimens are being used in novel new ways that could influence future environmental policy, species conservation and collections-based ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 13, 2019
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4
Piranha fish swap old teeth for new simultaneously
Piranha fish have a powerful bite. Their teeth help them shred through the flesh of their prey or even scrape plants off rocks to supplement their diet.
Evolution
Oct 15, 2019
1
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