Frogs: A Chorus of Colors

Monday, May 23 4:07 pm

Back by popular demand, Frogs: A Chorus of Colors, opens at the Museum on Saturday, May 28. Featuring more than 200 live frogs, from the tiny golden mantella frog to the enormous African bullfrog, this dynamic exhibition introduces visitors to these complex amphibians, their biology and evolution, their importance to ecosystems, and the threats they face in the wild.

In the video below, Associate Curator Christopher Raxworthy of the Museum’s Department of Herpetology discusses a few of the species featured in the exhibition and Hazel Davies, the Museum’s manager of Living Exhibits, shows the prep work and feeding that takes place every morning before visitors arrive.

Frogs: A Chorus of Colors from AMNH on Vimeo.

Podcast: Human Evolution and Why It Matters: A Conversation with Leakey and Johanson

10:49 am

Celebrating decades of groundbreaking exploration in East Africa, renowned paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey shared the stage at the American Museum of Natural History recently to discuss the overwhelming evidence for evolution in the hominid fossil record and why understanding our evolutionary history is so important. In this podcast, join the discussion, moderated by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN.

Known for such landmark discoveries as “Lucy” (Johanson) and “Turkana Boy” (Leakey), the work of these two scientists has produced much of the fossil evidence that forms our understanding of human evolution.

Looking back over careers spanning 40-plus years, Dr. Johanson and Dr. Leakey shared the stories behind their monumental finds and offered a look at what’s ahead in human evolutionary research.

This historic event was made possible through a joint partnership of the American Museum of Natural History, the Arizona State University Institute of Human Origins, and the Turkana Basin Institute, headquartered in the U.S. at Stony Brook University.

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes ( 1 hour, 29 mins, 107 MB)

New Fossil Solves the Puzzle of Mammalian Evolution

Wednesday, April 13 1:00 pm

Close-up view of Liaoconodon hui: the ear ossicles (circular ectotympanic area) and the ossified Meckel's cartilage aligned with the lower jaw. Image courtesy of Jin Meng.

A new, complete fossil from China published this week in Nature turns what’s known about the evolution of early mammals on its ear.

Described by paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Liaoconodon hui is a complete fossil mammal from the Mesozoic that includes the long-sought transitional middle ear between reptiles and true mammals. The specimen shows the bones associated with hearing in mammals— the malleus and incus, as well as the ectotympanic area —are decoupled from the lower jaw, as had been predicted, but were held in place by an ossified cartilage that rested in a groove on the lower jaw.

“People have been looking for this specimen for over 150 years since noticing a puzzling groove on the lower jaw of some early mammals, “ says Jin Meng, curator in the Division of Paleontology at the Museum and first author of the paper. “Now we have cartilage with ear bones attached, the first clear paleontological evidence showing relationships between the lower jaw and middle ear.”

The new research also suggests that the middle ear evolved at least twice in mammals, for monotremes and for the marsupial-placental group.

For more information, see the official press release.

Jin Meng talks about the discovery in the video below.

Armchair Adventures: Scientist Slide Shows Bring the Field to the Web

Tuesday, October 12 11:02 am

A century ago, James Chapin and Herbert Lang ventured into what was then considered the “heart of darkness” to survey and collect specimens along the Congo River for the American Museum of Natural History. Their adventures included leopard attacks, swimming monkeys, and a multitude of colorful new birds and fish. But these experiences were translated to readers several years after returning to New York as a treatise of freshwater fishes (1917) and a short history penned by Henry Fairfield Osborn (1919). Decades later, in 2002, the Museum put together a beautiful online narrative and gallery.

Today’s information age, in contrast, makes it easy to virtually follow scientists to the field. Earlier this year, Melanie Stiassny, Axelrod Research Curator in the Museum’s Department of Ichthyology, reported from the Upper Congo River for The New York Times’ “Scientist at Work: Notes from the Field“ blog.  Now, the primary funder of this field research, the National Science Foundation, has created a slide show of the expedition’s highlights narrated by Dr. Stiassny.

Museum Links Evolutionary Biology and Human Health

Wednesday, June 09 6:22 pm

What does Darwin have to do with human disease? Quite a lot, it turns out, as the lessons of evolution, enhanced by sophisticated technologies such as gene sequencing, are being used to tease out the secrets of organisms that spread death and disability around the globe.

The American Museum of Natural History has taken a leading role in these efforts through ongoing collaborations between its evolutionary biologists and medical researchers to understand various threats to human health, from flu pandemics to malaria to the ravages of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

This work was highlighted at a Science Breakfast panel discussion held last week at the Museum before an audience of medical and science writers.

Listen to the Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (1 hr 09 mins, 64 MB)

The panel included three curators from the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology who work under the auspices of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. Rob DeSalle, who moderated, Mark Siddall, and Ward Wheeler were joined by three medical scientists: New York University School of Medicine’s Jane Carlton, Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Robert Burk, and Columbia University’s Paul Planet.

Museum scientists help medical researchers pin down the origin, evolution, and diversity of pathogens, and, perhaps most important, how they have adapted to us and we to them.

“Every doctor, whether they know it or not, is a natural historian,” said Planet, who studies infectious diseases in children and is also a research associate at the Museum.

Another key component of collaboration is the development of new tools to make sense of masses of raw data. Case in point: the Supramap, displayed by Wheeler, a powerful new computer application which allows researchers and public health officials to track the spread and mutation of a disease over time and place.

Of course, the ultimate goal of such supercomputing, genome-sequencing, and the building of evolutionary trees is to better predict pandemic outbreaks and to find better treatments, even cures.

Said Burk, who has worked with DeSalle on the molecular phylogeny of the human papillomavirus, which is linked to cervical cancer, for a decade:  ”From the medical perspective, I think it’s very clear that the better we understand the pathogenesis of any disease, the better we are able to intervene.”