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National Museum of Natural History

A man wearing an orange rain jacket sits on a boat, framed by the ocean and a glacier behind him.

Meet the Scientist Tracing 10,000 Years of Indigenous Life Along Alaska's Southern Coast

Two women stand in a field, holding bundles of grasses with a rainbow coloring the sky in the background.

To Bridge Heritage and Science, the Smithsonian’s Inclusive Education Programs Empower Learners Through Culture and Community

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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

Two men sit on a rock bed on top of a forested hill over looking a remote lake.

Searching for Earth's Oldest Rocks: Follow a Smithsonian Expedition to the Remote Northwest Territories

A slab of multicolored, sedimentary rock is pictured with vibrant trees and water surrounding it.

Meet the Scientist Venturing to Remote Canada in Search of the Earth’s Oldest Rocks

Pink flowers bloom in front of a brick castle building across a field of green grass.

Enjoy Cherry Blossoms and More Natural History Programs this March

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Meet the Smithsonian Scientist Studying the Mysterious Mongolian Deer Stones

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Viking Women and Black-Footed Ferrets Are Coming to the Museum This Holiday Season

A landscape shot featuring a cloudy gray sky, snow-covered mountains in the distance above a turquoise expanse of glacial ice on the horizon and a dark blue expanse of water in the foreground.

Community Archeology Helps Bridge Gap Between Science and Tradition

While this year’s Arctic sea ice extended further than last year’s, there still wasn’t as much of it as there was only two decades ago. Thinner and younger sea ice in winter and less ice in the summer are two of the many elements of the Arctic’s new reality. (Credit: Patrick Kelley, U.S. Coast Guard. Public domain.)

Climate Change Redefines What 'Normal' Means in the Arctic

These walrus ivory carvings were collected in the mid-1880s. They were featured in a catalogue for the exhibition

How Arctic Anthropologists are Expanding Narratives about the North

A team of Smithsonian scientists excavating the Hart Chalet site found a double tournois copper coin minted for French King louis XIII in 1634. In pristine condition, it would have looked similar to this 1638 double tournois coin. (Images courtesy of the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Image composite by Anna Torres)

Some Archaeological Dating can be as Simple as Flipping a Coin

The 2016 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum, reached on Sept. 10, is 911,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average minimum sea ice extent, shown here as a gold line (NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr).

Can Science Help Policymakers Create the Arctic Policies We Need Right Now?

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will dive deep into the Arctic world of narwhals to explore what makes this mysterious animal and its changing ecosystem unique and important. “Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend” will present Inuit perspectives on their relationship with narwhals and the latest scientific knowledge about these animals, while illuminating the interconnectedness among narwhals, people and their ecosystems (Smithsonian Institution).

Narwhals, Narwhals, Swimming in the...Smithsonian?

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