Stories

It's the strongest El Niño in more than a hundred years, and far-flung creatures are already arriving in Southern California, with more expected in the coming months. Studying them will help NHM researchers better understand the impacts of the massive climate event.

We asked our Curator of Mammalogy and Curator of Community Science what to do about big, hairy nosy neighbors

Discover Talara, the asphaltic site in Northwest Peru

Dive deep into the fascinating complexities of Earth's orcas

Voyage alongside Dr. Tania Pineda-Enriquez, Collections Manager of Echinoderms, who recently returned from an epic expedition to document sea creatures inhabiting one of the most remote places on Earth—Antarctica.

Our Marine Biodiversity Center scientists have been sampling tidepools to build a "biolibrary" to identify the inhabitants of the coast's precious ecosystems.

A Tar Pits researcher reconstructed forests of 56 million years ago—with chilling parallels for our warming planet: climate change led to a widespread browning of Earth's landscapes—against a backdrop of elevated atmospheric CO₂, global warming, and reduced rainfall triggered by volcanically driven carbon release—and trees are at the root of these drastic changes.

The first new extinct toad species and the first description of the Mexican burrowing toad at the Tar Pits help us understand the impacts of climate change on species distributions, past, present, and future.

Published in the journal Science, a new study by NHM researchers shows that Mexico acted as a biodiversity "holding pen" for 10 million years ahead of the Great American Biotic Interchange that opened the floodgates between North and South America 2.8 million years ago.

Discover some of the Ice Age titans of Talara, the asphaltic site in Northwest Peru