Most of us are familiar with the crazy moon landing conspiracy theories that were sparked soon after Apollo 11 returned to Earth, but hardly anybody knows about the real moon hoax that occurred more than a hundred years before America’s Space Program was even conceived. On August 25, 1835 The Sun, a penny-press newspaper based […]
By Scott Solomon Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution in the middle of the 19th century. Are his ideas still relevant today? Remarkably, even though Darwin’s insights on evolution were based on little more than observations and the results of simple experiments he conducted in his home, his insights have largely withstood the test […]
It’s February and we’re finally past the most miserable phase of Houston’s trademark cold and soggy winter. Every once in a while we’re getting those perfect golden days of sun and warm (but not too warm) weather and many of us are already looking forward to enjoying the outdoors. With that in mind I thought […]
By Kimberly Vera, Membership Copywriter Becoming an HMNS member has many benefits —some, you might not be aware of, so join me as I take a closer look at a few and highlight my personal favorites. New! Fossil Discovery! One major perk to becoming an HMNS member is FREE entrance into our […]
The evening of Sunday, September 2, 2018 marked the loss of one of the world’s largest natural history collections. A fire destroyed the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, and with the building, a collection of roughly 20 million artifacts, specimens and books went up in smoke. This is a devastating loss to the […]
Brontosaurus doesn’t exist. At least for now it doesn’t exist. It once did, and it it might again soon, but not right now. I know this sounds confusing, so let me give you a little back story. Brontosaurus has to be the second most famous dinosaur on earth, right behind T. rex. Everyone knows […]
By Jeff Cummins, Horticulturist at the Cockrell Butterfly Center in the Houston Museum of Natural Science The Cockrell Butterfly Center was graced (?) a couple of weeks ago by a very special event. One of our corpse flowers, Lou, bloomed for the very first time! Lou is an Amorphophallus peaeoniifolius, a smaller species […]
By Ralph E. Phillips, HMNS Docent I can’t seem to get enough time … that is to say I keep thinking and digging into our concept of time. Why are there 60 minutes in an hour instead of 100? Why 60 seconds in a minute? Why 7 days in week? What would “Metric time” […]
Organized warfare has been part of human history for thousands of years. Over time advances in offensive weapons gave rise to advances in defensive measures. Times of crisis often led to a speeding up of such changes. One of those times were the Crusades. At the time I am writing this, the Houston Museum of […]
Was there a dinosaur-equivalent of Santa Claus living at the North Pole a 110 million years ago? The lack of fossil evidence suggests not…. But don’t worry because there were definitely dinosaurs living in the South Pole during the early cretaceous! And although they probably didn’t have beards and hand out presents, some of them were still […]
