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Life on a Sustainable Planet

Smithsonian Voices

American bison

Six Animals the Smithsonian Has Helped Save From Extinction

For more than a century, the Institution has placed a scientific focus on studying and conserving threatened species

Ben Marcus | March 7, 2024

PyensonFieseler_Qatar2018-01032.jpg

How Long Have Sea Cows Thrived in the Arabian Gulf? We Literally Stumbled on a Clue

An overcast stroll on a rocky, oil-stained shoreline is probably not your idea of a day at the beach. It didn’t bother us. We were wandering up and down Qatar’s coast to find the bones of recently dead marine mammals.

Clare Fieseler and Nick Pyenson | December 7, 2021

Scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (including Nick Pyenson, left) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute collect a fossil dolphin from the Caribbean coast of Panama. The fossil is encased in a white plaster jacket, and recovered as the tide rushed in.
© Aaron O'Dea / Smithsonian Institution

Digging Into the Past to Find Optimism for the Future

We know that story of what will happen in the coming decades and centuries... what's different about where we're going has to do with the rate of these changes and the biodiversity at hand.

Cat Kutz | April 20, 2020

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