Science Stories Archive
Archived Stories - Expeditions
(04/2009) Participants search for fossils at the Florida Museum of Natural History's 18th Annual Thomas Farm Fossil Dig, which took place this year from March 31 to April 5. The site, located about 45 miles northwest of Gainesville, contains...
(03/2009) When asked if mountains grow slowly and steadily versus in rapid spurts, most people intuitively gravitate to the "slow and steady" model. Mountains, we are taught, take an incomprehensively...
(03/2009) Contrary to previous evidence, a new University of Florida study shows the Isthmus of Panama was most likely formed by the Central American Peninsula colliding slowly with the South American continent through tectonic plate...
(02/2009) When most people hear the words Guantanamo Bay, they immediately think of the infamous prison built there in 2001. But for Roger Portell, an invertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Guantanamo means the chance to collect...
(12/2008) In May 2008, a team of researchers from the Florida Museum traveled to Madagascar to search remaining patches of lowland forest for land snails and to document new snail species. Non-marine mollusks like land snails are the animal group...
(05/2008) The unusual discovery of well-preserved fossils in a water-filled sinkhole called a blue hole revealed the bones of landlubbing crocodiles and tortoises that did not survive human encroachment...
(03/2008) David Steadman, a paleo-ornithologist at the Florida Museum, has an ambitious goal to find the oldest hummingbird fossils in North America, and says the perfect spot to search may be within an hour's drive from Gainesville...
(12/2007) As one approaches the plantation along the north coast from Nassau there are eight stone buildings that served as the homes for Wylly’s married slaves. These buildings are in relatively good condition, although their roofs have deteriorated. Next,...
(11/2007) Last season, nearly 220 complete skeletons were excavated from Haile 7G – some encased in plaster jackets, and some wrapped in protective tissues – and transported to the Museum’s Vertebrate Paleontology division, where they will...
(10/2007) It’s a mammoth job, setting out to document all the butterflies of South America’s tropical Andean cordillera...But Florida Museum of Natural History butterfly researcher Keith Willmott and his colleagues are relishing the task...
(07/2007) Gustav Paulay, a curator of invertebrate zoology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, is participating in several large-scale marine biodiversity surveys to find and document as many existing invertebrate species as possible, before they disappear forever...
(4/2007) Florida Museum ornithologists David Steadman and Andrew Kratter turned up the surprising new discovery on a collecting expedition in the Solomon Islands. Theirs is the first frogmouth from these islands to be caught by scientists in more than 100 years...
(02/2007) A new study provides evidence that the last inhabitants of Christopher Columbus’ first settlement desperately tried to extract silver from lead ore, originally brought from Spain for other uses, just before abandoning the failed mining operation in 1498...
(02/2007) ewind 300 years and imagine you are a Spanish colonist in Florida fleeing for your life to the protection of St. Augustine's fortified walls. Or maybe you are a Native American desperate to escape the relentless assaults of...
(09/2006) As they plowed a pasture in the spring of 2001 to plant peanuts, Bruce and Allan Tyner of Newberry looked forward to a good harvest. They sure weren't thinking about rhinoceroses...
(06/2006) In 426 AD, a noble we now know as K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' (Great Sun First Quetzal Macaw), arrived in the Copán Valley of Honduras, Central America, and founded a dynasty of Maya kings that endured for over 400 years. Where Yax Ku'k Mo originally traveled...
(10/2005) “Into Africa” rather than “Out of Africa” could well be the better description of how certain mammals originated and spread across the world...
(09/2005) Few people today are aware that a century and a half before there was a San Francisco in California, a San Francisco mission existed in northern Florida. San Antonio, San Diego, Santa Fe—all were missions that once served Florida Indians...
(07/2005) The Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the oldest U.S. military installation on foreign soil. It was established at the end of the Spanish-American war and celebrated its centennial in 2003...
(06/2005) Several years ago a University of Florida librarian handed me a copy of a recently donated 1873 newspaper article taken from the New York Weekly Sun. Unsigned, the article included a wonderful account of a visit to Turtle Mound...
(01/2005) The Florida Program for Shark Research, directed by the Florida Museum of Natural History’s George H. Burgess, is one of four such shark research programs comprising the National Shark Research Consortium...
(12/2004) To the west stretched the vast expanse of the Caribbean Sea; to the north rose the magnificent Pitons, the symbol of St. Lucia. In April 2004, a pick-up truck deposited our field team...
(10/2004) Drying waterholes, baked brown grasses, and the ever-blowing hot wind greeted us, as my wife Shelley and I pushed our dust-coated car down the dirt roads toward Toadstool Park...
(06/2004) The remnants of an Indian village destroyed by war almost two centuries ago reveal the Seminoles were actually blending into the American melting pot before they were driven to the swamps of South Florida, say Florida Museum of Natural History researchers....