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The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s FossiLab is a busy place, responsible for preparing newly-collected fossils for Smithsonian’s scientists and maintaining the fossils in the Smithsonian’s collection. Visitors to the museum can actually watch staff and volunteers at work in the FossiLab, which is located within the Last American Dinosaurs Exhibition. One of the projects in the FossiLab is the conservation and rehousing of specimens from the Museum’s fossil marine mammal collection. The specimens range from individual teeth to skulls, jaws and more-or-less complete skeletons comprised of both intact and fragmentary bones.

During the 1990-91 austral summer, geologist David Elliot came across fossil bones on Mount Kirkpatrick in the Beardmore Glacier region of the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica at an altitude of ~4,000 m (13,000 ft) high and about 640 km (400 mi) from the South Pole. The team notified paleontologist Bill Hammer, who then excavated the fossil-bearing rock over a three week period. The excavated skeleton was eventually given the name Cryolophosaurus ellioti in an 1994 article in Science by Hammer and paleontologist William J. Hickerson.

Welcome to Fossil Stories, a week-long social media event (presented by the Biodiversity Heritage Library in collaboration with several of our partner institutions) celebrating fossils!

Today, we recognize fossils as representing the preserved remains or traces of life from the ancient past. The scientific study of these fossils, how they formed, and their evolutionary relationship with each other and living species is known as paleontology. Humans have been uncovering fossils for millennia, but we have not always understood what they were.

UPDATE: We are proud to announce that after 3.5 days, volunteers successfully transcribed and reviewed all 252 pages of field notes that we uploaded as part of this challenge! Thanks to all of our great volunteers, and tune in all week (Oct. 13-16, 2015) for more great fossil fun and highlights from the challenge! October 14 is National Fossil Day! What do you think you might learn if we unleashed notes on the mighty and micro fossilized specimens in the Smithsonian Institution’s collections?

October 14, 2015, is National Fossil Day, a day to celebrate all things fossils! Museums around the country are celebrating with fossil-related events the entire month of October, especially during the week of Fossil Day. BHL will be joining the fossil-mania next week with our social media campaign, Fossil Stories, running October 13-16, 2015. Rocks hold the key to the history of life on Earth. Buried within the earth are millions of years’ worth of fossils, each of which tells a unique story about the life and ecosystems that once dominated our planet. These fossils not only reveal Earth’s past, but also provide insight into our future.

An international ensemble of biodiversity-minded professionals recently gathered in Nairobi, Kenya for two weeks of trainings and conferences. From 24-26 September, 2015, fifteen representatives from eleven institutions throughout South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda attended a BHL Africa training workshop at the National Museums of Kenya. Following the workshop, 28 September – 1 October, 2015, the TDWG Annual Conference was held at the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club in Nairobi. The BHL Africa Workshop was an opportunity to provide training and help build capacity amongst the current signatories of the BHL Africa MOU.

As the Coordinator of BHL Australia, I’m based at Museum Victoria in Melbourne. This is a very long way from BHL headquarters in Washington DC – in both space and time. The time difference between Melbourne and DC is 14 hours and, while I’ve had countless conversations with BHL staff via email, our opposing work hours make phone calls or virtual meetings almost impossible. Last month I was able to visit my BHL colleagues in person. I had been invited to speak at the Society of American Archivists conference about my work digitizing and transcribing the handwritten field diaries of Australia’s early naturalists.