Article

If You Build An Ocean, Sea Monsters Will Come

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

Article

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 An Extinct Mammal May Have Been Replaced By Today's Sea Cows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

Spirals in Time: A Walk at the Seashore

When I set out to write a book about mollusks (called Spirals in Time), I wasn't...

Personal Perspectives

The Discovery of Two Extreme Sea Stars

Recently, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History researcher Chris Mah and...

Article

The Whale Graveyard Whodunit

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

Personal Perspectives

The Design of a Beautiful Weapon

This summer, many of you have likely enjoyed feasting on crabs, be they blue,...

Personal Perspectives

Ribbon Worm Redux

Even on an early winter morning, it was sunny and warm in southern Florida. This...

Personal Perspectives

The Search for an Elusive Ribbon Worm

With 1,400 named species of ribbon worms inhabiting every ecosystem on earth,...

Personal Perspectives

How Coastal Seagrass Feeds the Deep

It is a well-known fact that for animals living in the deep sea, food can be...

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...