A paradise tanager looks directly into a camera with its green head cocked, visible red spot on its back, and stunningly bright blue breast.
Research and Collections
Hidden black and white feathers are the secret behind songbirds' dazzling colors
Colorful songbirds like tanagers use a painterly technique to make their colors pop
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Vintage illustration of various feathers and specimen skins of birds
Research and Collections
How Bird Feathers Work
A brief look at the structure of feathers—and what they mean to birds
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A life-like painting of a large lizard lurking over a nest of dinosaur eggs with one already in its mouth
Research and Collections
A Monster “Goblin” at the Feet of Dinosaurs
Meet the newly discovered giant, armored lizard named for the Hobbit’s goblin prince
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An silhouette of a bird filled with naming words like 'black' 'western' etc
Research and Collections
A First Step to Bird Names as Simple as ABC
First-of-its-kind Avian Lexicon Atlas maps how bird species get their names
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Illustration of a long-legged crocodile-looking reptile looks at a mammal carcass on an ancient tropical islands
Research and Collections
How Ancient Crocodile-Like Predators Ruled the Islands of the Caribbean
NHM's scientist discovers that sebicids, ancient land-dwelling crocodile-like beasts, reigned over the West Indies as apex predators after vanishing from South America
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The lower jaw of a dire wolf from La Brea Tar PIts resting on a piece of paper with the words "Last known real dirw wolf in the world!!" Aenocyon dirus lower jaw 13,082 years old' written on it
Dire Wolves: Sorry, They’re Totally Still Extinct
NHM and Tar Pits experts weigh in on why dire wolves have not, in fact, been successfully cloned, and the surprising perils of de-extinction
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A skeletal looking Vinciguerria mabahiss under a microscope and black background
Research and Collections
The Lights Below
A new study shines a light on the mechanics of bioluminescence in the rare fish Vinciguerria mabahiss and we explore some of the other fish lighting up the deep
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A male house finch with a little red plumage around its beak and breast alongside otherwise gray feathers being held still by a person's hand
Research and Collections
Bird banding, Wildfire Smoke, and the Nature Gardens
Researchers band birds and collect feathers in the Nature Gardens to study the impacts of wildfire smoke on birds.
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Juniper seeds
Solving a Juniper Seed Mystery at La Brea Tar Pits
How identifying a mysterious fossil seed reveals Ice Age climate change
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A paleoart rendition of Eupachydiscus sp. by Cullen Townsend.
Research and Collections
Collections Staff Help Ammonites Come Out of Their Shells
Uncovering how digitization and collections management made a groundbreaking extinction study come to life
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