Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Natural History Museum

The fossil Arktocara yakataga (resting on an 1875 ethnographic map of Alaska) belonged to a dolphin that swam in subarctic marine waters around 25 million years ago.

Smithsonian Researchers Uncover Extinct, Ancient River Dolphin Fossil Hiding in Their Own Collections

Sometimes, paleontologists don’t have to go into the field to discover a tantalizing new species

Named for photographer Barry Brown, meet the newly discovered scorpionfish Scorpaenodes barrybrowni.

On a Deep Dive in a Custom-Built Submarine, a New Species of Scorpionfish Is Discovered

A Smithsonian scientist dives deep to a coral reef and finds much to discover

Ten-year veteran of the Smithsonian's protective services office, Sargeant Nadia Tyler is master of the wildly popular Pokémon Go.

Gotta Catch ‘Em All on the National Mall

Sergeant Nadia Tyler, a security guard at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, is collecting Pokémon creatures daily

“I hope people of the future will look back on us and see that we learned the lessons of deep time,” says Smithsonian paleontologist Scott Wing.

Age of Humans

Studying the Climate of the Past Is Essential for Preparing for Today’s Rapidly Changing Climate

A Smithsonian scientist explains why in the new Age of Humans, we must turn from crisis management to planet management

Banaue rice terraces (N. Luzon, Philippines) taken from observation point at beginning of road to Bontoc

Age of Humans

Since the Late Pleistocene Humans Were Already Radically Transforming the Earth

A new study suggests that trying to return habitats to a non human-impacted environment might not be realistic

A trowel placed in a Native American oyster midden that dates to about 1,000 years ago shows the relative size of the shells. The average size of modern oysters is significantly smaller.

How Big Were Oysters in the Chesapeake Before Colonization?

A new multidisciplinary study reveals that yes, oysters were larger and more plentiful before European contact

A club from Massachusetts in the shape of a fish, probably Atlantic sturgeon, dates to about 1750. The area was previously thought to have only one language at the time of European contact, but new research reveals there were five Native American languages were spoken in the Connecticut Valley of central Massachusetts.

Five Lost Languages Rediscovered in Massachusetts

Smithsonian linguist Ives Goddard finds that the Native Americans of central Massachusetts spoke five languages instead of one

Pangolin

Art Meets Science

These Eerie Portraits Capture Endangered and Extinct Animals in a Film That Is Also Vanishing

Denis Defibaugh uses Polaroid 55 film to give animal specimens an afterlife

The grand hall of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut—the wellspring of some the most distinguished scholarship of our times.

The Scientific Daredevils Who Made Yale’s Peabody Museum a National Treasure

When an award-winning science writer dug into the backstory of this New Haven institute, he found a world of scientific derring-do

Brindled Stamiter, Cricetus fasciatus

Weird Animals

Audubon Pranked Fellow Naturalist by Making Up Fake Rodents

Annoyed with naturalist and houseguest Constantine Rafinesque, John J. Audubon dreamed up 28 non-existent species

The National Museum of Natural History is seen engulfed in fire at Mandi house on April 26, 2016 in New Delhi.

Trending Today

Fire Devastates New Delhi’s National Museum of Natural History

A late night blaze guts one of India’s favorite museums, destroying valuable collections and exhibits

Workers in Sumatra process an oil palm harvest from the plantation on the left even as the remnants of the natural peat swamp forest in the distance are burned to make way for new plantations.

Journey to the Center of Earth

The Mad Dash to Figure Out the Fate of Peatlands

As the planet’s peat swamps come under threat, the destiny of their stored carbon remains a mystery

In a new book The Naturalist, the Smithsonian's Darrin Lunde draws on Teddy Roosevelt's diaries and expedition journals to tell the story of the 26th president as a prodigious hunter, tireless adventurer and ardent conservationist.

Teddy Roosevelt’s Epic (But Strangely Altruistic) Hunt for a White Rhino

In a new book, a Smithsonian naturalist tells the gritty, controversial tale of how one of America’s presidents felled a threatened species

Feather identification expert Roxie Laybourne stands surrounded by colorful birds. This image took roughly eight hours to set up.

The Story Behind Those Jaw-Dropping Photos of the Collections at the Natural History Museum

The images capture only a fraction of the millions of creatures and objects that are stored away from the public eye

T. rex had tiny arms. But that’s no reason to mock the dinosaur.

Stop Making Fun of Tyrannosaurs’ Tiny Arms

The stubby limbs may seem out of place, but they may have been key to the T. rex’s terrifying bite

In a reconstruction, by artist John Gurche, the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum displays what the Hobbit would have looked like in the Hall of Human Origins.

“Hobbits” Disappeared Much Earlier Than Previously Thought

If the tiny hominins ever coexisted with modern humans, the arrangement apparently didn’t last long

A reconstruction of the horse-sized tyrannosaur Timurlengia euotica, named for the charismatic Central Asian ruler Tamerlane, shows the species' long, slender legs, large head and teeth built sharp like a steak knife.

The Discovery of a Tiny Tyrannosaur Adds New Insight Into the Origins of T. Rex

The horse-sized dino species had smarts and a keen sense of smell, setting the stage for the evolution of the enormous predator

A biocube is placed in Central Park's Hallett Nature Sanctuary in New York City.

You’d Be Astounded to Learn How Much Wildlife Can Fit Into One Cubic Foot

A whole new world opens up when you try to catalog every visible creature that moves in and out of a biocube set down on either land or in water

The skeleton of a Steller's sea cow hangs in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

“Mermaid Ivory” Stirs Controversy Over How Extinct Species Are Studied

The carved bones of marine mammals highlight the squishy regulations around their trade and what that means for science

An image of the fossilized lacewing Oregramma illecebrosa, left, and the modern owl butterfly Calico Memnon, right.

New Research

Jurassic-Era Insect Looks Just Like a Modern Butterfly

Jurassic “butterflies” helped pollinate ancient plants millions of years before the butterfly even existed

Page 20 of 24