I am approaching my second year of working at the Nature Museum and through my journey I have come upon unexpected discoveries, both personally and professionally. When I first graduated […]
The Red-Bellied Snake
I have spent the last three months georeferencing the herpetology collection for the Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Georeferencing is the practice of digitally mapping spatial […]
Club Mosses and their Mighty Ancestors
Some of the most visually striking organisms bear a resemblance to their extinct prehistoric relatives. They transport our imaginations to a time when the land beneath our feet looked very […]
Do Atlas moths eat?
Morpho butterflies and Atlas moths are two very cool insects that you can find in Animal Crossing AND see in real life at the Nature Museum! Entomologist Allen works with Atlas […]
It’s migration season!
This Saturday, October 8, is World Migratory Bird Day. Officially, World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated on the second Saturday in May and October to recognize both the northward and southward migrations. […]
How do we know where monarchs go?
Monarch migration is in full swing! But where do our local monarchs go for the winter? And how do we know where they end up? Dr. Doug Taron is here to […]
It’s Finally Thyme: Processing the Botany Backlog
In 1944, the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Honorary Curator of Botany, Anna Pedersen Kummer, reflected on recent developments to the Academy’s Herbarium in The Chicago Naturalist: “Much excellent materials been […]
“What do natural history museum collections look like?”
Not many people have had the opportunity to go behind the scenes at our Ravenswood Collections facility…until now! Today, Dawn and Jessica are taking us for a special virtual tour through […]
Collections Reveal Traces of Living Animals
What if there were a way to look back in time and observe living animals interacting directly with their environment? Natural history collections preserve the remains of organisms and the […]
The Ghosts of Prairies Past: Uncovering Yesterday’s Truths with Museum Collections
From expansive cities to agricultural fields, it may come as a surprise that Illinois was once covered in millions of acres of prairies and forests. In 1820, about 22 million […]
