What is so great about a Mollusk shell having spines or spikes? We could say they are pretty and even spectacular, and that would be true. However, they actually have a very specific purpose in the life of mollusks. Let us imagine we are a Clam (Bivalve). We do not have hands or tentacles that […]
Although Earth Day is officially set worldwide for Thursday, April 22, 2021, the Houston Museum of Natural Science is celebrating our planetary home throughout April with Celebration: Earth. All month long, Houston’s science museum is concentrating on our shared home with special nature- and conservation- themed exhibits, tours, and activities for everyone. “Because nature is […]
It’s October, time to take our yearly dose of fright around the campfire and let out all our heathenish mischief before we have to act like angels during the holidays, right? Yes, we need October. But honestly it’s not because we’re all evil. The fact is that scaring the whits out of our friends and […]
The National Weather Service reported last week that 35 trillion gallons of water fell in the state of Texas during the month of May. The ground is soaked for what may well be weeks to come, our bayous have swollen far beyond their usual limits and residents in Harris and Ft. Bend counties continue to […]
In 1972, mammalogist Ralph Wetzel and colleagues were studying armadillo ectoparasites in the Paraguayan Chaco when they came upon a peccary (what we call javelina in Texas) that didn’t look like those already known to science. The result was Catagonus wagneri – the Chacoan peccary, known only from a fossil discovered in 1930 by Argentinian […]
There are fewer people connected to nature now than ever before—and no one connected to it in the same way as the Hadza. One of the last hunter-gather groups on earth, the Hadza have lived sustainably off the bounty of their ancestral homeland in Africa’s Rift Valley for at least 50,000 years. But their unique […]
Editor’s note: This blog post is a summation of “New Species of Scotophilus (Chiroptera: Vespertiliondae) from Sub-Saharan Africa,” written by HMNS Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Daniel M. Brooks and John W. Bickham, and published as a monograph in the Occasional Papers of the Museum at Texas Tech University. Sub-Saharan Africa is a hotbed of biological diversity. A […]
Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Dina Aboul Saad, Director of Development at the American Research Center in Egypt. Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Coptic and Islamic sites further our understanding of the rich cultural history of Egypt, but there’s much more to Egypt than digging up artifacts. Have you ever thought about what happens to […]
Editor’s Note: Alexis North is a third-year graduate student in Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials at UCLA. She specializes in the conservation of archaeological objects and is working at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University this summer, preparing a group of objects for display here at HMNS. Read the first blog from […]
What would it take to go all renewable? What would it take to use exclusively renewable energy resources? What would you have to add to or take away from your home? How would your life change? For most of my energy entries, I’ve talked about conservation at the individual level. That’s because I know we […]
