As the Associate Curator of Malacology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Tina Petway is our resident queen of the seas. At 75 years young, the native Texan has spent her whole life walking along the nearly 3,400 miles of the Texas Gulf Coast shoreline. “Mother Nature has been remodeling our coastline for thousands […]
Written by Tina Petway, Associate Curator of Malacology and Marine Invertebrates While we all love to watch things fly up into the sky such as helium balloons, we do not see them when they eventually come back to earth. Unfortunately for marine and land animals they prove to be the instrument of death. Whales, porpoises, […]
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 […]
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster may no longer be a buzzword in the media, but the effects of history’s largest oil spill on the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico are still on the minds of marine scientists around the world. Gulf seafood seems to be recovering, but biologists are keeping a close eye to […]
When Tina Petway, Associate Curator of Malacology, retired as a schoolteacher in 1999, she finally embarked on fulfilling her dream since she was 12 years old. Growing up, Petway was frustrated by the lack of resources for young women interested in scientific careers. “I was walking on the beach, and I ran into this lady […]
After 90 days working at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, here’s the verdict: I love it here! Through research required to compose and edit posts for this blog, I have learned about voracious snails, shark extinction, dinosaur match-ups, efforts to clean up ocean plastic pollution, Houston’s flooding cycle, a mysterious society in south China, […]
Don’t stick your hand in that shell! You don’t know who might be home. It could be a carnivorous snail or a “clawsome” crab. Take a look at our Texas state shell, the lightning whelk or left-handed whelk, which feeds on bivalves like oysters and clams. Perhaps the snail that makes the shell is still […]
One of the most awesome parts of working for a Museum (especially one as large as ours) is how many people you get to meet and work with – all with something different that gets them excited about science! It’s easy to celebrate your inner geek when you can find fellow geeks who you can […]
