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Meals of the Mighty Mosasaur

Between 100 and 65 million years ago, at the time when dinosaurs reigned on land,...

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If You Build An Ocean, Sea Monsters Will Come

Building a productive ocean is complicated. The process is long (on the order of...

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What the Megalodon Left Behind

The largest shark ever to exist on this planet, Carcharocles megalodon, could grow...

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Flippers or Feet? An Extinct Mammal May Have Been Replaced By Today's Sea Cows

In the seagrass beds and kelp forests of the Oligocene-Miocene transition, nearly...

Personal Perspectives

Reflections on the Successful Search for the Giant Squid

I have been at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History since...

Personal Perspectives

Whale fossils on the mainland, and into a CT scanner

After a few long days of hard work on the island, we were finally able to excavate...

Personal Perspectives

Dispatches from the Field: Treacherous stream crossings and a new fossil find

We departed from Port Renfrew on Tuesday morning on the Michelle Diana, a boat...

Personal Perspectives

Excavating a "toothed" baleen whale from Vancouver Island

The whales that we see in today's world can broadly be split into two groups: those...

Personal Perspectives

Smithsonian Scientists Describe a 'New' Fossil Whale

Monodontids, the group of whales that includes the belugas and narwhals swimming...

Personal Perspectives

New Archaeocetes from Peru Are the Oldest Fossil Whales from South America

The evolution of whales represents one of the great stories in macroevolution. It's...

What Lives in the Gulf of Mexico? Exploring Marine Collections on Google Earth

When he was 10 years old, Stephen Cairns lived in Cuba where he kept a collection...

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Meet the Only Squid that Willfully Lops off its Arms

Lopping off one’s arm sounds like a harrowing experience, but for one deep-sea...