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. 

They may seem as delicate as gossamer, but moths and butterflies routinely survive the cold, harsh weather of New York winters. This post, adapted from A Seasonal Guide to New York City's Invertebrates, written by Elizabeth A. Johnson, explains a bit about how the four-stage life cycle of these insects helps them survive the cold.

The dioramas in the Jill and Lewis Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals have always been splendid, but after more than a year of painstaking restoration, they look better than ever. A multi-video series documents their renovation. In this video, Museum artist Stephen C. Quinn describes how a team re-created the evocative blue moonlight over snow in the wolf diorama.

On Sunday, February 3, 2013, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, reached a Twitter milestone: a million followers for his tweets from @neiltyson.

After traveling through space for seven years, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft began orbiting the planet Mercury in March, 2011. In this podcast, join MESSENGER's principal investigator Sean Solomon as he describes how the spacecraft's specialized instruments are collecting information that is key to understanding terrestrial planet evolution.