New research showing that that mercury levels are higher in some species of tuna could help consumers minimize their consumption of the silvery metal in their sushi and provide a powerful new tool for regulatory organizations. The new research—combining DNA barcoding at the Museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics with analysis of mercury content at Rutgers University—is published in Biology Letters and shows surprisingly that tuna sushi purchased in supermarkets might be healthier than that from restaurants. The sushi made for supermarkets tends to be yellowfin tuna.
“We found that mercury levels are linked to specific species,” says Jacob Lowenstein, a graduate student affiliated with the Museum. “So far, the U.S. does not require restaurants and merchants to clarify what species they are selling or trading, but species names and clearer labeling would allow consumers to exercise greater control over the level of mercury they imbibe.”
Weighing a freshly caught yellowfin tuna enroute to Japan at Suisan fish market in Hilo, Hawaii. Credit: Joanna Burger
A plate of sushi with several pieces of tuna in the center (dark red is akami; light pink is toro). Credit: Joanna Burger
Join Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, the former director general of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, as he shares his unique experience and perspectives on the current archeological and museum conditions in Iraq.
Dr. Youkhanna was instrumental in the recovery of thousands of Mesopotamian artworks and artifacts looted during the U.S. invasion in 2003. He was also President of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. In 2006, he was forced to leave Iraq and is now a visiting professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
The Looting of the Iraq Museum: An Evening with Dr. Donny George Youkhanna was recorded at the American Museum of Natural History on Feburary 24, 2010.
The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano last week sent up a giant cloud of ash, causing major European airports to shut down and stranding thousands of airline passengers. Volcanic ash, composed of tiny particles which can be fatal to aircraft jet engines, has been carried east over Europe by winds.
The American Museum of Natural History’s Charles Mandeville, a volcanologist and geochemist in the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told ABC News why this eruption proved particularly disruptive: “Normally in Icelandic volcanic eruptions the ash doesn’t go this high because the gases come out easily,” he said. “But in this case we have magma interacting with glacial melt water quite explosively, which lifts the ash to great heights.” Watch the full segment here.
The American Museum of Natural History raised more than $350,000 at the annual Museum Dance last week. For more than four decades the Museum has captured the attention and imagination of 800 young New Yorkers for a spectacular evening of dinner, dancing, fun, and philanthropy. Money raised at this premier junior benefit goes toward the Museum’s scientific and educational programs, which enable thousands of under-served New York City school children to visit the Museum annually.
With more than 1,000 guests in attendance, the Spring Safari themed dance began with cocktails in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and dinner in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, followed by dessert and dancing in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Music was provided by DJs Harley Viera-Newton and Cassie Coane.
Guests also snapped up all the items in a silent auction, which included luxury items like a Lilly Pulitzer shopping party, New York Yankees tickets, classes at the Institute of Culinary Education, and accessories from Valentino, Versace and Armani.
For more information about the Museum’s Junior Council, a membership group of young philanthropic New Yorkers, please visit amnh.org/juniorcouncil. And visit the Museum’s Flickr page to see photos from other exciting events.
Stereomicrograph of Tyrannobdella rex jaw showing large teeth on a single jaw. by Phillips, et al. 2010
The new T. rex has ferociously large teeth lining a single jaw — but its length is less than two inches long. Tyrannobdella rex, a new species and genus of leech, was discovered when doctors plucked it from the nose of a girl who’d recently been bathing in an Amazonian river. Described in PLoS ONE, the blood sucker had led to the revision of a group of leeches that has a habit of feeding from body orifices of mammals.
“Because of our analysis of morphology and DNA, we think that Tyrannobdella rex is most closely related to another leech that gets into the mouths of livestock in Mexico,” says Anna Phillips, a graduate student affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and the first author of the paper. The related species Pintobdella chiapasensis hails from Chiapas and is typically hosted by tapir and cows. Analysis of genetic sequences places these species with others found in the world’s tropics, suggesting that their common ancestor must have lived when the continents were pressed together into a single land mass, or before Pangaea broke up.
“We named it Tyrannobdella rex because of its enormous teeth,” says Mark Siddall, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. “Besides, the earliest species in this family of these leeches no-doubt shared an environment with dinosaurs about 200 million years ago, when some ancestor of our T. rex may have been up that other T. rex’s nose.”
For more on Mark Siddall, watch a recent field video of the curator searching for leeches in Rwanda.
Join Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, the former director general of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, as he shares his unique experience and perspectives on the current archeological and museum conditions in Iraq.
