The following excerpt from Natural Histories: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library (Sterling Signature, 2012), edited by Tom Baione, the Museum Library’s director, highlights the role of rare 19th- and 20th-century monographs in advancing science. It was written by Joel L. Cracraft, chair of the Division of Vertebrate Zoology.

If you’ve ever been curious about where the monarch butterflies disappear to in the winter, don’t miss the film Flight of the Butterflies, playing in the LeFrak IMAX Theater for just one more month, through Sunday, July 7.

This Saturday, more than 500 public middle school students from New York City will show off more than 300 of their best research projects during a major science expo at the Museum celebrating the successful ninth year of Urban Advantage Middle School Science Program.

Japanese sake is getting more popular every year, but it remains an age-old wine with much mystery. In this podcast, join writer and sake “Samuari” Timothy Sullivan, as he reveals behind-the-scenes details about Japan’s famous Hakkaisan Sake Brewery. 

The world’s oldest known fossil primate skeleton is from an animal that lived about 55 million years ago and was even smaller than today’s smallest primate, the pygmy mouse lemur. The new specimen, named Archicebus achilles, was unearthed from an ancient lake bed in central China and is described by an international team of researchers today in the journal Nature.