Applications to the Museum's 2013 Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP)—a unique opportunity for high school students to work with Museum scientists on an array of mentored research projects—are due on Wednesday, April 3. Click here for more information about the program and how to apply.

Birds living today are dinosaurs and often have brilliantly colored plumage. Did extinct dinosaurs also sport vibrant hues? Learn more from Mark A. Norell, chair of the Division of Paleontology, in a video.

What does it mean to be a 21st-century American naturalist? On Tuesday, April 9, join moderator Tom Brokaw and panelists Douglas Brinkley, a Roosevelt biographer; Lisa Graumlich, scientist and dean at the University of Washington's College of the Environment; Michael Novacek, senior vice president and provost of science at the Museum; and Rick Ridgeway, vice president for environmental initiatives at Patagonia, for Conservation, Wilderness, and the American Dream, a special event about the close links between American identity and natural heritage, as well as the role today's naturalists can play in conservation.

Like the 18th-century German naturalist August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, whose beautifully illustrated Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium (Natural history of the native frogs) he describes in an essay in Natural Histories, Curator Darrel R. Frost has created a comprehensive reference about amphibians. He manages Amphibian Species of the World, an online database and classification system for about 7,000 amphibian species, of which about 6,200 are frogs. 

It's down to just a final, furry 4 potential nicknames for our hypothetical placental ancestor! Vote for the two finalists now.