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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Garden Stories
    Monsters Are Real
    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
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Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts in Fossil Stories

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

A Sinner Killed During the Great Flood or a Fossil Reptile? Discovering the Plesiosaur

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Most people today are at least somewhat familiar with the order of extinct marine reptiles known as Plesiosauria, thanks to the legend of the Loch Ness monster, which is often described as resembling a plesiosaur. Indeed, some argue that Nessie may in fact be a surviving member of this order. Scientists, however, reject this suggestion, if for no other reason that the Loch Ness lake formed a mere 10,000 years ago, while the fossil record indicates that plesiosaurs went extinct over 66 million years ago. And yet, even if plesiosaurs can’t account for the Loch Ness legend, the story of their discovery is still captivating. Plesiosaurs are among the first extinct fossil reptiles to be recognized as such.
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October 14, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Challenge Focus: Harry S. Ladd

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We’re so excited that our #FossilStories Citizen Science Challenge was successfully completed on October 12, with 252 pages from 9 field books fully transcribed and reviewed in just 3.5 days! Be sure to tune into the behind-the-scenes tour of Smithsonian fossil collections with Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, via the BHL Periscope on October 26 as a reward for the successful completion of the challenge.
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October 14, 2015byLesley Parilla
BHL News, Blog Reel, Campaigns, Fossil Stories

Webcast! Exploring the Smithsonian’s FossiLab

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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.
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October 14, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Proving Extinction: Cuvier and the Elephantimorpha

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At the end of the eighteenth century, Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier, also known as Georges Cuvier and widely remembered as the Father of Paleontology, helped establish extinction as a fact and laid the foundation for vertebrate paleontology. Born in Montbéliard, France, in 1769, Cuvier formed an interest in natural history at a young age, and by the time he was 26 (in 1795), he became the assistant of Jean-Claude Mertrud, the chair of comparative anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes.
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October 13, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Fossils Under the Microscope: Hooke and Micrographia

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By the seventeenth century, it was still widely believed that species could not become extinct, and there were still many hypotheses about the origin of fossils. One widely-held belief, extending back to Aristotle’s time, was that fossils were formed by the Earth itself, and that some “extraordinary Plastick virtue” could create stones that resembled, but were not, living organisms. But also during the seventeenth century, some critical advances in the world of science were having an impact on fossil research. Robert Hooke was born at Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, in 1635. Though of humble origins, he eventually studied at Oxford and impressed many of England’s leading scientists with his ability to design experiments and build equipment.
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October 13, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Challenge Focus: Lester F. Ward

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Our Fossil Stories citizen science challenge – a challenge to fully transcribe three paleontologists’ field books from the Smithsonian collection – is complete! Volunteers have successfully transcribed and reviewed 252 pages from 9 field books in just 3.5 days! Thanks to all of our awesome volunteers for their monumental efforts! As a reward, we’ll be hosting a behind-the-scenes tour of Smithsonian fossil collections with Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, on the BHL Periscope Account on October 26.
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October 13, 2015byLesley Parilla
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Early Innovations in Paleontology: Gessner and Fossils

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Until the end of the 18th century, it was generally believed that species could not become extinct, and despite important scientific advances in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was widely held that since the dawn of life, no new animal or plant species had been created or lost.Furthermore, until the 19th century, the word “fossil” referred to any object that had been dug up from the ground, including not only what we recognize today as organic remains, but also gemstones, minerals, and other inorganic materials.
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October 13, 2015byGrace Costantino
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Fossil Stories

Rocks hold the key to the history of life on Earth. Fossil Stories explores the world of fossils, the history of paleontology, and the men, women, and publications that shaped our knowledge of life preserved in rocks.
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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