By far the largest and oldest group in the order Lepidoptera, moths are usually overshadowed by their flashier cousins, the butterflies. But they are finally getting their due in Winged Tapestries: Moths at Large, a photo exhibition now open at the Museum.

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.

Museum Curator Mark E. Siddall joins former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as he announces the 2012 provisional Guinea worm case numbers during a LIVE broadcast via Google+ Hangout at 10:45 am EST this Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. 

Research led by Museum scientists shows that ammonites, an extinct type of shelled mollusk that’s closely related to modern-day nautiluses and squids, made homes in the unique environments surrounding methane seeps in the seaway that once covered America’s Great Plains. The findings, recently published in the journal Geology, provide new insights into the mode of life and habitat of these ancient animals.

In the Black Hills region of South Dakota, researchers are investigating a 74-million-year-old mound of fossilized material where methane-rich fluids once migrated through the sediments onto the sea floor. When the face of this cliff recently slumped off, a wide variety of bivalves, sponges, corals, fish, crinoids, and, as recently documented, ammonites, were revealed.

A brief, blustery storm blew across the Museum’s Arthur Ross Terrace Wednesday evening, taking with it most of the scalloped cardboard structure of a human-sized wasp nest under construction there since Monday. Three British TV hosts are to be filmed living in the nest this weekend as part of a new Nat Geo WILD series called “Live Like an Animal.”

The unexpected need to rebuild the nest or “envelope” provided an object lesson in actual wasp behavior.

“It is a fact that wasps repair the envelope if the damage to the nest is not too great, where ‘too great’ means something like the nest falls down,” says James M. Carpenter, entomologist and curator in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology, who is working in consultation with the television crew. “I’ve done experiments in envelope removal in the field myself and seen it.”