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    All Featured Books
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  • 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
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with whales

Blog Reel, User Stories

Time Traveling with BHL: Open Access to Historic Data Empowers Modern Research…At Home

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Dr. Nick Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals in the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Paleobiology, has been a longtime user and advocate for BHL. The historic data accessible through publications in BHL underpins much of his work. For example, the Discovery Reports, which present the results of groundbreaking investigations into the biology of whales, helped inform Pyenson’s studies on the evolution of cetacean body size and whale hearing.

While BHL has been a valued resource for Pyenson for many years, digital access to scientific literature has become especially important as research has shifted to a primarily telework environment.

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May 21, 2020byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Old Literature, New Discoveries: BHL Supports Cutting Edge Whale Research

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In the early 20th century, the British Colonial Office and the Discovery Committee of the British Government undertook a series of major investigations into the biology of whales in the Southern Hemisphere.
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May 11, 2017byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

In Search of the White Whale: A Legend, a Fossil, a Living Mammal

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1820. Far west of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. A whaleship pursues a pod of sperm whales. Suddenly, an eighty-five foot long giant charges the ship, ramming it with its head not once, but twice, caving in the bows and sending the ship to a watery grave. This is the story of the sinking of the Essex, the subject of Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel In the Heart of the Sea, opening this Friday.

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December 9, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

No Flippant Matter: The Re-Invention of the Flipper and Why Ceatacean Flippers Are Unique

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Cetaceans are not closely related to other aquatic vertebrates and represent a unique lineage derived from hoofed land mammals that returned to an aquatic lifestyle about 50 million years ago (Thewissen, 1998). The transition from land to water, i.e. the development from weight-bearing forelimb with five hoofed toes to tissue-encased flipper not capable to support locomotion on land, is well documented by fossils (Thewissen et al., 2001, 2009) and very different from other aquatic vertebrates. Consequently many morphological characteristics that cannot be detected in fossils have remained little documented or speculative.
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April 9, 2015byMoyna K. Müller
Blog Reel, Featured Books

True Detective: Frederick W. True’s lifelong dedication to uncovering the natural history of marine mammals

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This post is a guest post by John Ososky and Nick Pyenson, originally published on the Pyenson Lab blog.

The Smithsonian Field Book Project is showcasing Frederick William True in February!

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February 13, 2015byNicholas Pyenson and John Ososky
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Monsters Are Real

A Whale of a Tale…The Leviathan

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In the 6th century AD, St. Brendan, an Irish cleric, and eighteen other monks, sailed out from Ireland to cross the ocean. Amidst their journey, they came upon a black, treeless island and decided to make camp for the night. Several monks set up a cooking station and lit a fire. And then the island began to move. Terrified, the monks fled back to their boat, leaving the food and fire behind. St.
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October 28, 2014byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Celebrating Oceans and Marine Biodiversity

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This Saturday, June 8, is World Oceans Day, the UN-designated day for the global community to celebrate and take action to protect Earth’s oceans. 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, and every living thing depends on water to survive. Sadly, according to the United Nations, with the world eating more seafood than ever before, approximately 2/3 of the ocean’s species are overfished.

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June 6, 2013byGrace Costantino

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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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