video

Coral Reefs Changing Over Time

How do we know what coral reefs looked like hundreds of years ago? Often times, we...

video

Sea Lion Sickness

Both humans and sea lions get sick from eating fish and shellfish that have been...

video

Protecting Sharks: How Nets Hurt

Tom Peschak, a photojournalist with the Save Our Seas Foundation, describes the...

slideshow

A Squalodontid Success

On a beach in Piña, Panama the tide is rolling out. Faint outlines of skeletal...

Photo

Ancient Sea Cow Vertebra

A fossil vertebra that a Smithsonian researcher's mother found while prospecting in...

Photo

Mangrove Island Clear-Cut for Tourism

This mangrove island in the Pelican Cays, Belize, was clear-cut and filled with...

Article

The Whale Graveyard Whodunit

One of the ocean's tiniest organisms often does the most harm. Microscopic algae...

Photo

The Digsite at Cerro Ballena

Chilean and Smithsonian paleontologists study several fossil whale skeletons at...

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...

Photo

An Ancient Whale Skeleton, Unexcavated

Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National...