This month, a team of international researchers led by the American Museum of Natural History and Stony Brook University determined in unprecedented detail what the earliest ancestor of placental mammals—the widely diverse group of animals ranging from whales to bats to humans—looked like.  The Museum is teaming up with WNYC’s Radiolab to sponsor a tournament to name this early ancestor. Want to enter? 

A video series on amnh.tv delves into the topic of dinosaurs, which arose some 230 million years ago and thrived until most large dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago. Why? In the video series, paleontologists Mark Norell, Michael Novacek, and Lowell Dingus  explain extinction and more. 

A small, furry-tailed, insect-eating creature was the earliest ancestor of placental mammals—a widely diverse group of animals ranging from bats to humans—according to a new study in the journal Science by a team of international scientists, including a core group of Museum researchers. 

For centuries, humans have been fascinated by giant squids, among the largest—and most elusive—living invertebrate species. The Museum's giant squid (Architeuthis kirkii) specimen is one of few housed in a museum in North America, says Curator Neil H. Landman, who studies fossil (and living) invertebrates in the Division of Paleontology.

A new scientific study shows that duck-billed dinosaurs pulverized tough and abrasive plants with grinding teeth more complex than those of cows, horses, and other well-known modern grazers. The researchers, which included Mark Norell, the chair of the Museum’s Division of Paleontology, are the first to recover material properties from fossilized teeth.