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Erin Malsbury

Erin Malsbury is an intern in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Her writing has appeared in Science, Eos, Mongabay and the Mercury News, among others. Erin recently graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with an MS in science communication. She also holds a BS in ecology and a BA in anthropology from the University of Georgia. You can find her at erinmalsbury.com.

Stories from this author

A meteorite in the process of being recovered by volunteers in the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program. The shiny fusion crust on this meteorite suggests it may be an achondrite. (ANSMET)

What Antarctic Meteorites Tell Us About Earth’s Origins

Each year, Smithsonian scientists collect hundreds of meteorites from Antarctica that reveal details about the origins of Earth and our solar system.

Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History sequenced the genomes of 363 bird species in 2020. (Brian Schmidt, Smithsonian)

10 Popular Scientific Discoveries from 2020

Here are some of 2020’s most popular discoveries involving scientists from the National Museum of Natural History.

Tens of millions of years of bird evolution guided some of the most important elements of human-powered flight. (Pixabay)

How We Lifted Flight from Bird Evolution

The path to flight in modern birds was full of forks, twists and dead ends.

Sequencing entire genomes from ancient tissues helps researchers reveal the evolutionary and domestication histories of species. (Thomas Harper, The Pennsylvania State University)

How Ancient DNA Unearths Corn’s A-maize-ing History

New study shows how extracting whole genomes from ancient material opens the door for new research questions and breathes new life into old samples.

Plants and animals around the globe use a wide variety of evolutionary strategies to survive harsh winters.

How Seven of Nature’s Coolest Species Weather the Cold

Check out these unexpected adaptations to extreme cold.

Scientists discovered a new species of odd-scaled burrowing snakes in northern Vietnam. (American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists)

Rare Iridescent Snake Discovered in Vietnam

The discovery could help scientists piece together new information about snake evolution.

The Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems working group combines expertise from paleontologists and ecologists to improve our understanding of ancient and modern ecosystems. (Mary Parrish, Smithsonian)

Interdisciplinary Study Shows How Species Interactions Affect Evolution

The study shows that it’s possible to model how competition for resources, symbiosis or predation shapes the evolution and survival of species.

The Smithsonian’s Division of Birds provided about 40% of the tissue samples for the new bird genomes in a landmark study. (James Di Loreto, Smithsonian)

Landmark Study Shares Smithsonian Bird DNA Collected Over Three Decades

A new study in Nature published the genomes — the complete DNA sequences — of 363 species of birds, opening the door for hundreds of new studies.

From leaf-engineering to complex social circles, there’s more to bats than flying and echolocation. (Charles J Sharp)

Five Reasons to Love Bats

For Bat Week this year, we rounded up five reasons to love and conserve these misunderstood mammals.

Cole had been using fossils in the National Museum of Natural History’s Springer collections for her research long before joining the museum as a curator. (Selina Cole, Smithsonian)

Meet the Scientist Using Fossils to Predict Future Extinctions

Selina Cole has dedicated her career to understanding the emergence and disappearance of species throughout Earth’s history.

The Pacific bigfin squid (Magnapinna pacifica) in the Smithsonian collections that Mike Vecchione and Richard E. Young used to describe the deepest-known species of squid. (Richard E. Young)

Get to Know the Scientist Discovering Deep-Sea Squids

For this month's "Meet a SI-entist," we chatted with the Smithsonian's curator of cephalopods to learn more about these wonderfully weird animals on World Octopus Day.

An artistic representation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. (NIAID)

Six Videos that Put the Pandemic in Context

These six video webinars explore the life cycle of modern outbreaks — from infection to immunity — and put COVID-19 into historical context.

While digging through decaying carcasses, vultures expose themselves to dangerous pathogens. Gary Graves studies the unique microorganisms in the guts of these birds that help them resist infections. (Joyce Cory)

Meet the Scientist Studying Vulture Guts for Clues to Disease Immunity

We caught up with the Smithsonian's curator of birds for “Meet a SI-entist” to talk about what makes vultures lovable, curating the National Bird Collection and co-organizing ornithology’s most ambitious project.

Smithsonian anthropologists hold up the world’s longest beard after it was donated to the National Museum of Natural History in 1967. (Smithsonian)

Five of Nature’s Best Beards for World Beard Day

Humans aren’t the only bearded beasts. In the sea, the sky and the land between, organisms sport bristles, fuzz and fur of all styles. Instead of splitting hairs over what type of beard is best, here are five of nature’s finest.

The Smithsonian’s National Mosquito Collection has about 1.9 million specimens from around the world that researchers use to study diseases like malaria. (Paul Fetters for the Smithsonian)

Get to Know the Scientist in Charge of Smithsonian’s 1.9 Million Mosquitoes

We caught up with Dr. Yvonne Linton to talk about what it’s like managing the Smithsonian's almost 2 million mosquito specimens and trying to determine ones are most dangerous to people.

Scientists use a California condor specimen from 1835 — part of the Smithsonian’s very first collection of items — to study the critically endangered species. Pictured: a young California condor in Pinnacles National Park. (Gavin Emmons)

How Scientists Still Use the Smithsonian’s First Collections, 175 Years Later

Historic museum specimens help us learn more about what a species once was like and what it could be like in the future.

Scientists plan to piece together the genetic code of all plants, animals, fungi and protists within the next ten years as part of the Earth BioGenome Project.

Scientists to Read DNA of All Eukaryotes in 10 Years

Researchers at the Smithsonian and around the world are working to sequence the genomes of every eukaryotic species on Earth in the next 10 years through the Earth BioGenome Project.