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Chihiro Kai

Chihiro Kai is a Science Writing Intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She covers natural history research for the museum's online magazine, Smithsonian Voices. Chihiro is a double major in Journalism and Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the University of Kansas. She is particularly fond of dinosaurs and was a research volunteer for two field seasons at the KU Vertebrate Paleontology Lab. Previous to the Smithsonian, Chihiro was a freelance reporter covering the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, specializing in the COVID-19 pandemic and Japanese domestic and international policy. One of her favorite pastimes is watching old "Bill Nye the Science Guy" episodes.

Stories from this author

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Newly Described Fossil From Wyoming Sheds Light on When Frogs and Toads Lost Their Teeth

A fragment of upper jaw fossil from the Early Cretaceous is among the oldest examples of a toothless amphibian in the fossil record

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The Murder Mystery Linking a Bird Specimen at the National Museum of Natural History to the Mysterious Death of an Arctic Explorer

In 1871, a naturalist aboard the U.S.S. Polaris collected scientific specimens — and possibly poisoned the ship’s captain

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Meet the Scientist Decoding Human History in South America Through Giant Ground Sloth Fossils

Thaís Pansani examines the marks humans left on megafauna bones to determine when people arrived in South America and how they interacted with giant mammals

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The Name Game: A 'Celebrity' Cephalopod Specimen Correctly Identified More Than 80 Years After Discovery

Collected by the iconic American writer John Steinbeck, the octopus has received a number of scientific monikers