National Museum of Natural History Unearthed

Your Museum Madness 2012 Champion is ...

... the Tasmanian Tiger!

In the Australia exhibit of the National Museum of Natural History's Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals, look beyond the dingo, and behind the gossamer fabric screen at the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), a rare mounted specimen of an extinct species of carnivorous marsupial that once lived throughout Australian continent, including the island of Tasmania. Printed on the screen is the title “An Extinction Story” and the question “What happened when these two predators faced off?” The dingo—a wild dog that arrived in Australia with Asian seafarers 3,500 years ago—and the thylacine, are not related species. However, as Australia's top predators, they shared a similar diet. As the dingo spread throughout the Australian continent, the thylacine disappeared, apparently surviving only on the isolated southern island of Tasmania by the time that European settlers arrived in Australia just over 200 years ago ...

Read the complete story on your 2012 Museum Madness Champion here!

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

 

Image Caption and Credit: Two of the National Zoo’s thylacines, probably the surviving offspring of the original female, outside the Carnivora House, c. 1905. One of these animals (most likely the one in front) is USNM 125345, a specimen recently DNA-sequenced by a team of international scientists. Credit: Photo by E. J. Keller; National Zoological Park.

Museum Madness 2012 @NMNH - Results of Battle of the Champions and the Championship!

After letting our competitors rest (even collections need a little break!), the time has finally arrived for the Museum Madness 2012 Championship!

 

Who are the contenders and how did they make it to the Championship?

 

 

Round 1: vs. Tarantula

Round 2: vs. Giant Squid

Round 3: vs. Bull Mummy

Round 4: vs. Deep-Sea Vent Worms

 

 

 

 

 

Round 1: vs. Turtle Skeleton

Round 2: vs. Neanderthal from Shanidar

Round 3: vs. Basilosaurus

Round 4: vs. Coelacanth

 

 

 

 

 

Who will be victorious? It's up to you!

Sarah Banks, Audience Engagement Specialist, Office of Education and Outreach

Winter Break Interns 2012 - Michelle Daniel

Where are you from and what brings you to the Museum?

I come from Toronto, Canada, where I study Forest Conservation and Environmental Biology at the University of Toronto. Travelling to DC meant more than escaping the cold weather! I was drawn in by the excitement of the national museum environment and the opportunity to contribute to a project and an institution that is nationally and internationally meaningful. Interning at the Museum gave me the chance to combine what I have learned in my classes with participating in real research projects.

How did you get "Behind those Doors?"

I heard about the Winter Internship program a few months ago and kept a close watch on the website until the projects were posted in October. It was hard to choose just one! I applied to the Conservation of Bureau of Land Management's Botanical Voucher Collection project, which sounded exciting and likely a good fit for my interests. Once I contacted my staff sponsor, Andrew Clark, we were able to discuss the project further, and he and other NMNH staff made the rest of the process easy.  Soon the paperwork was complete, my flight was booked, and I was on my way!  

What is it you're doing back there, behind those doors?

I came to help with a project called Seeds of Success. Plant specimens and seed have been collected from all over the country to organize a seed bank (housed in Alaska) and a collection of the specimens as vouchers, which are joining the herbarium colelction at the Museum. While I was visiting, we started using the database that will enable us to organize the collection and the information we have about the specimens. This will allow scholars and land management professionals to study the specimens and to use them as vouchers to access seeds in the future for regeneration and other initiatives.

In addition to those directly associated with the Seeds of Success project, I had the opportunity to explore the collection and participate in many of the aspects and functions of the herbarium during my internship. I was amazed at how many specimens there are! It was important to learn how the collections and other herbaria are organized and maintained. One of the things that I enjoyed most was working in plant mounting. The staff and volunteers who do this are like artists, and many of the specimens they prepare are very beautiful. Watching this and other aspects meant that myself and the other interns on this project were able to learn about the journey that a plant makes after being collected in the field. It's exciting to know we worked with specimens that are now part of a historically significant collection that we expect will continue to be valued and protected for hundreds of years to come.

What's been the most amazing or unexpected thing you've seen, experienced or discovered while being part of the NMNH academic community?

I think everyone would agree with me that the Museum is a very exciting place to be! I could have happily spent much more time in the exhibits, on behind-the-scenes tours, and at nearby sites. A particular highlight of my time had to be the behind-the-scenes tour of the paleobiology collection. From the tiny specimens to the dinosaurs, everything was so cool, and it was awesome to be shown around by an expert! For me though, the most amazing part of my internship was the sense of commitment across the Museum community to making this a great experience for me. I encountered a wide range of scholars who made every effort to ensure that I learned as much as possible through the project and even beyond the Museum - making my visit to DC a wonderful experience.

Michelle Daniel, Winter Break Intern, Seeds of Success Project

 

 

Image credits: All images courtesy of Michelle Daniel

Museum Madness 2012 @NMNH - Results of the Division Finals!

From the thirty-two contenders that began on March 21st, you've narrowed the field down to four division champions. Thank you for your enthusiastic responses and support of the objects about which you want to learn more!

Highlights:

While it breezed past the Hope Diamond in Round 1 and the Monarch Butterfly in Round 2, the Bull Mummy just couldn't move past Titanoboa in Round 3. The Deep-Sea Vent Worms, meanwhile, continued their winning streak as your votes helped them to a victory over the Wood Collection.

 

Your Division Champs are ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who are you pulling for in Round 3? Voting will open later this afternoon, and we'll need your help to narrow the field from 4 to 2!

Sarah Banks, Audience Engagement Specialist, Office of Education and Outreach

Museum Madness 2012 @NMNH - Round 2 Results and Division Finals Coming Up!

After a fast and furious Museum Madness: Round 2, the results are here! Did your favorites make it to Round 3? Were you surprised by any of the new information you learned?

Highlights:

The Giant Squid and the Fenykovi Elephant exited the tournament in Round 2 with losses to Titanoboa and Phoenix. It was neck and neck with the Handaxe Made by Early Humans and the Wood Collection, until the Wood Collection pulled ahead by a single vote!

So who's still in the running after Round 2?

In the Backbones Division we have ...

1. Phoenix, the North Atlantic Right Whale
2. Coelacanth

In the Classics Division we have ...

1. Basilosaurus
2. Tasmanian Tiger

In the Exhibit All-Stars Division we have ...

1. Bull Mummy
2. Titanoboa

In the Wild Cards Division we have ...

1. Deep-Sea Vent Worms
2. Wood Collection

Who are you pulling for in Round 3? Voting will open soon, and we'll need your help to narrow the field from 8 to 4!

Sarah Banks, Audience Engagement Specialist, Office of Education and Outreach

Museum Madness 2012 @NMNH - Round 1 Results!

You, the fans of NMNH, have spoken and the results of Museum Madness: Round 1 are in! Read on for highlights and find out if your favorites made it to Round 2.

Highlights:

Round 1 got off to a great start with a landslide win by the Megalodon Jaws over the T-Rex. The perennial favorite Fenykovi Elephant then triumphed over the Roosevelt Rhinos, and Martha the Passenger Pigeon handily beat Snarge. The surprise of this round came at the end when the Hope Diamond suffered a narrow loss to the Bull Mummy.

So who's left standing after Round 1?

In the Backbones Division we have ...

1. Fenykovi Elephant
2. Martha the Passenger Pigeon
3. Phoenix, the North Atlantic Right Whale
4. Coelacanth

In the Classics Division we have ...

1. Basilosaurus
2. Tasmanian Tiger
3. Megalodon Jaws
4. Neanderthal from Shanidar

In the Exhibit All-Stars Division we have ...

1. Monarch Butterfly
2. Bull Mummy
3. Titanoboa
4. Giant Squid

In the Wild Cards Division we have ...

1. Allende Meteorite
2. Deep-Sea Vent Worms
3. Handaxe Made by Early Humans
4. Wood Collection

Did your favorites make it through? If not, who will you root for in Round 2? Let us know and get ready for more voting tomorrow, March 28th!

Sarah Banks, Audience Engagement Specialist, Office of Education and Outreach

 

Museum Madness 2012 @NMNH

Not a basketball fan? Feeling left out of the March Madness fun? Wishing there was a bracket that incorporated your interests in birds, mammals, insects, fishes, and more?

We have the solution for you! It’s called ...

Museum Madness is our version of the basketball tournament - with a twist. Instead of teams competing, we have objects vying for your interest. Would you like to learn more about our iconic elephant or a species of fish thought to have died out with the dinosaurs? Over the next two weeks, you decide what will advance through the rounds and reign victorious.

So who are the contenders?

In the Backbones Division we have ...

1. Fenykovi Elephant
2. Martha the Passenger Pigeon
3. Snarge
4. Roosevelt Rhinos
5. Phoenix, the North Atlantic Right Whale
6. X-ray of a Seahorse
7. Coelacanth
8. Great White Shark

In the Classics Division we have ...

1. Basilosaurus
2. Burgess Shale Fossils
3. Tasmanian Tiger
4. T-Rex
5. Megalodon Jaws
6. Neanderthal from Shanidar
7. Lucy, Our Early Human Ancestor (reconstruction)
8. Turtle Skeleton

In the Exhibit All-Stars Division we have ...

1. Hope Diamond
2. Easter Island Stone Figure
3. Monarch Butterfly
4. Bull Mummy
5. Tarantula
6. Titanoboa
7. Korean Bridal Gown
8. Giant Squid

In the Wild Cards Division we have ...

1. Allende Meteorite
2. Smithsonite
3. Deep-Sea Vent Worms
4. Handaxe Made by Early Humans
5. Wood Collection
6. Scarab Beetle
7. Invertebrates from the Gulf of Mexico
8. Modern Human Art and Music

How do you vote and follow the action?

Starting Tuesday, March 20th, keep an eye open where you follow us - Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest - for links to the voting pages.

Sarah Banks, Audience Engagement Specialist, Office of Education and Outreach

 

The Biodiversity Heritage Library: Free Access to Biodiversity Literature

An Entomologist writing a book on skipper butterflies needs to verify several citations and species names. The information he needs to do so is held within a natural history library not accessible to him. A team of malacologists is attempting to catalog the entire family of Pyramidellidae, but after fifty years has still barely scratched the surface as they are unable to identify and obtain the necessary literature. A botanist in an isolated African village has no access to the literature needed to complete his research project on local flora. Just ten years ago, without access to the necessary literature, the individuals in each of these scenarios would have been unable to complete their work. Today, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has changed that reality. 

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of 14 natural history and botanical libraries (including the Smithsonian Institution) that collaborate to digitize past and present biodiversity literature, all of which is made freely available to the public. On BHL, you can find over 37.8 million pages of digitized literature (representing over 53,000 titles and 102,000 volumes), going back as far as 1484 and continuing to present day. Not only can you browse millions of pages online, but you can download PDFs and high resolution images of that material. You can also search for literature about a specific species and navigate back to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) for more information on the organism.

You can learn more about BHL, discover fun biodiversity facts, participate in daily quizzes, and explore thousands of free biodiversity images through BHL's social media outlets, including our Blog, Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to check out BHL's Flickr account, which includes more than 23,000 natural history and botanical illustrations from the past 400 years, many of which are extremely rare and incredibly valuable. This growing collection of images from BHL books (several of which are featured in this post) is freely available for download and reuse. Finally, you can download select BHL content directly to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch though the Biodiversity Heritage Library on iTunes U. Again, all content is completely free.

Today, earth's biodiversity faces many challenges, and it is vital that the critical knowledge held within legacy literature be made available to scientists, researchers, conservationists, and the public at large so that we can make intelligent decisions to save global biodiversity for generations to come. Projects like BHL, which provide free global access to digitized versions of this literature, repatriate information about the earth's species to all parts of the world, helping everyone obtain the information needed to protect and preserve life on Earth.

Start exploring today at www.biodiversitylibrary.org. 


Grace Costantino, Program Manager, Biodiversity Heritage Library


Image Captions and Credits (top to bottom): New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus :and the temple of Flora, or garden of nature (1807), Nymphaea nelumbo, Sacred Egyptian Bean. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/307094; Bilder-Atlas zur wissenschaftlich-popul‰ren Naturgeschichte der Wirbelthiere (1867), Fig. 9. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4024179; Kunstformen der Natur (1904), Taf. 85. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/33543656.

Fossil Hunting under the Watchful Eyes of Lions

The Museum’s fossil preparation facility, FossiLab, recently received a shipment of dinosaur fossils from northern Zimbabwe.  They were collected last year by an international team of scientists, including NMNH Dinosaur Curator Matt Carrano.

The fossils, still largely encased in rock, are of two types of dinosaur.  One, a small, primitive meat eater closely related to Coelophysis, was a member of the dinosaur group that eventually gave rise to huge predators like T. rex.  These fossils were found in a “bone bed,” a place where the fossil remains of many individuals are mixed together.  Coelophysis fossils have been found in other bone beds, most famously at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, and the new discovery may help scientists answer questions such as whether Coelophysis and related species lived in groups, and what events led to the death and burial of so many animals at once.  The other Zimbabwean dinosaur is a prosauropod, a medium-sized plant eater that had a large claw on its thumb, a long neck, and leaf-shaped teeth for chopping plant matter.  They seem to have been quite common at a time when the local environment was desert, and researchers wonder why.

The scientists discovered the fossils in a river canyon.  During the rainy season, water courses through the canyon eroding its rock walls and uncovering fossils.  Then, when the rains stop, the riverbed dries up and becomes a convenient path for scientists prospecting for newly exposed fossils – and for lions and elephants traveling through the bush.

Paleontologists are friendly, as a rule, but prospecting can be solitary work.  Team members often spread out to cover as much territory as possible, and as they walk slowly along searching for fossils, they sometimes become oblivious to everything around them.  Obviously, this is not the smartest behavior when large, possibly dangerous animals are nearby, so the team hired a local wildlife guide to keep them out of trouble.  He coached them on what not to do when charged by lions (run), or elephants (stand still) and kept them bunched together in the relative safety of a “herd” as they prospected in the canyon.

The scientists found the tracks of several big cats as they worked in the riverbed, but, to their relief, they came face to face with only one group of predators -- dinosaurs, all safely fossilized.

 Abby Telfer, FossiLab Manager, Paleobiology Department

Image captions and credits (top to bottom): At the Museum, a plaster and burlap field jacket holds a jumble of dinosaur fossils from the bone bed, including a jaw fragment with teeth (center). Photo by A. Telfer; Removing fossils from the canyon wall in Zimbabwe.  Photo by M. Carrano;  Leopard tracks in the dry riverbed. Photo by M. Carrano.

Crowdsourcing Via Social Media Allows Rapid Remote Taxonomic Identification

Last month, a Smithsonian (NMNH)-sponsored team of ichthyologists performed the first survey of the fish diversity in the Cuyuni River of Guyana.  Upon their return, they needed to identify over 5,000 specimens in less than a week’s time in order to obtain an export permit.  Faced with insufficient time and inadequate library resources to tackle the problem on their own, they instead posted a catalog of specimen images to Facebook and turned to their network of colleagues for help. 

In less than 24 hours, this approach identified approximately 90% of the posted specimens to at least the level of genus, revealed the presence of at least two likely undescribed species, indicated two new records for Guyana and generated several loan requests. The majority of commenters held a Ph.D. in ichthyology or a related field, and hailed from a great diversity of countries including the USA, Canada, France, Switzerland, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil. 

By quickly tapping the collective expertise of their social network to help with the preliminary identification process, the expedition members were able to sort, pack and export the specimens to Washington DC in a timely manner. The identifications will also speed the cataloging process and help make the material available for loan and study as quickly as possible.  Such crowdsourcing of identifications would not have been possible five years ago, but increased internet access across South America and the massive recent growth of social networks have made tapping the world’s collective knowledge easier than ever.  Based on this experience, Facebook offers a remarkably efficient free tool that can accelerate taxonomic identification substantially.

Brian Sidlauskas, expedition leader and Research Collaborator of Dr. Richard Vari, in the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Vertebrate Zoology

Image captions and credits: Fish identified as Hypostomus taphorni. (top) Fish identified as Guianacara cuyunii. (bottom) Images courtesy of Whit Bronaugh, a graduate student at Oregon State University. 

*The expedition was funded by the NMNH Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield Program and the Department of Vertebrate Zoology.