History

Double Treat: a tale of one donation & two collections

October 31 2016October 29, 2016

Many kinds of mites are associated with insects. Some feed on the insects, while others just hitch a ride. When you work in an insect collection it is not uncommon to find tiny mite “guests” attached to the bodies of our specimens.

As described in a previous post in this blog, when the OSU Acarology Collection acquired the Asher E. Treat Mite Collection, they received a large number of boxes containing slide-mounted mites and a few oversized Schmidt boxes packed with dry mounted moth specimens. The mites were originally collected on (or in!) these moths.

Oversized Schmidt boxes containing the Asher Treat moth vouchers.

Box labels highlighted the mite taxa associated with the moth vouchers.

Label highlights the mite group attached to the moth vouchers

Inside of a moth voucher box

Detail of one tray with voucher specimens in box

Asher Treat wrote a whole book about mites and the moths they associate with. Like the mites in the Treat collection, the moths are research vouchers, the specimens that Treat referred to (and even illustrated) in his publications.

As with all research voucher specimens, the Treat moths need to be properly preserved for the future and, when necessary, made available to scientists who might want to examine the specimens. As the Triplehorn Insect Collection is a well-known public research voucher repository, we were asked to hold the Treat moth vouchers. At the time we received them from our colleagues in Acarology, we posted some images in the collection’s Facebook page.

The first stop for the Treat moths was the insect collection -40°C freezer. The extreme cold kills any potential pests that might be hiding with the incoming specimens. These pests, things like carpet beetles (dermestids), eat dead, dried insects, reducing them to a pile of dust. So it’s essential that we do not introduce them into the collection! Later on we gently moved all the moths (and/or pieces of them) to our regular storage trays and drawers. Many of the specimens did not have individual labels attached to them. So to avoid confusion, we transferred the specimens to new trays, but kept them in the exact same organization used by Treat. This whole process took several weeks.

During the initial curation we noticed that many of the moths had detailed labels, including the number and kinds of mites removed from them. Some even mention that they were photographed for a publication. However, other specimens don’t have much information associated with them at all. It’s not clear if those are research vouchers or just regular specimens that Treat had in his collection but did not use for publication.

Many moth vouchers sharing one big label. During curation labels will be added to each specimen.

Many moth vouchers sharing one common label. During curation labels will be added to each specimen.

Asher Treat dissected the moth specimens in search of mites. Appendages and sometimes the abdomen may be missing.

Detailed specimen label associated with many of the Asher Treat moth vouchers

Detailed specimen labels associated with many of the Asher Treat moth vouchers

Some moths in the Treat collection have insufficient label data.

Treat moth vouchers with proper label data, including number of mites found

Many of the Treat moth vouchers are beautifully mounted and very well preserved.

Asher Treat moth vouchers waiting curation

Asher Treat moth vouchers awaiting curation

As we curate the collection further, the confirmed research vouchers will receive voucher labels (green, makes it easy to see them in the collection) and a unique identification number. The specimen label data will be digitized and added to our online database, and finally the specimens will be stored according to the moth group (family, genus, species) they belong to. Besides the specimen label data, we will eventually have images of all vouchers specimens.

I am hoping that as the Acarology collection completes the curation and digitization of the Treat mite specimens, we will have answers to some of our questions regarding the voucher status of the specimens. And since we share the same database platform, xBio:D developed here at the Triplehorn collection, we will be able to easily associate the mite specimens with their moth hosts.

The curation of the Asher Treat moth voucher collection will demand many more hours of work by our student assistants and volunteers.

Sunset Moth in the Treat collection.

If insect curation is the kind of activity you think you would like to learn (or maybe you’re already an expert?!), come talk to me! Volunteer some of your time and talent to help us make the Treat moth vouchers available to the world. Volunteers make a tremendous contribution to the collection and, therefore, to science.

If volunteering is not your thing, maybe you will consider making a donation to the C.A. Triplehorn Insect Collection Friends Fund (#314967). Your gift will revert 100% to the collection and support the dedicated students & interns that work in the collection while getting trained to become the biodiversity scientists of the future. Thank you for your interest!

About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and the current Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Artifacts of Our Curiosity

October 28 2016October 28, 2016

Sometimes there are small treasures that show up on shelves of the museum that we can’t add to the collection, but feel like must be preserved. This is one of those treasures.

This darling package must have been donated a long time ago because no one currently working in the Mollusc range remembers who or where it came from. Apparently Things of Science were small boxes you could order in the 1950’s/1960’s with information and experiments covering a range of subjects. We’ve scanned up the little book and uploaded a photo of the shells that were included in the kit. Enjoy!

: Things-of-science upon opening

: Things-of-science inside the box

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About the Author: Sara Klips is the Mussel Fairy discovering artifacts in the mollusc collection.

Impressions of working in the Herbarium

September 19 2016September 16, 2016

I have been working at The Ohio State University Herbarium in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology (EEOB) since May 2015. This particular unit is known for its vast collection of botanical specimens. A quick stroll through the herbarium paints a picture of its deep reserve of information. This stroll both begins and ends with my workplace, the herbarium preparation room, where my co-workers and I mount pressed plants as our student job.

Workplace to process plant specimens in the herbarium

For us, a typical work day starts by preparing all the necessary utensils or equipment. First I lay out a sheet of plexiglass as the working surface. Then I prepare a suitable ratio of Elmer’s glue (used for wood, paper, etc.) with water, and the brushes that I’ll need for the day. There’s a cabinet that includes the specimens that I and other assistants work from. One day we work with simpler, more sturdy specimens with wide leaves, like those of the Asteraceae (the daisy family) or Solanaceae (the potato family) – families of plants that I learned well while working here. Other days we work with grasses, the Poaceae, that are harder to mount as there are many thin surfaces to attach to the mounting paper. This will then be kept in a bin for up to 48 hours to dry, after which it will be taken out, sorted out, and given an accession number. Additional work such as taping and sewing is done by volunteers. Finally the specimens are stored for posterity in the herbarium’s collection.

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What is interesting about these dry plants is that each specimen was brought to the herbarium for a particular purpose. Each specimen has its own story. Although the action of mounting the plants requires attentive handling and an affinity for aesthetics and composition, the heart of the process really lies in the plant’s journey to the OSU herbarium. Some of the plants we mount are fifty or even hundred years older than us. Others come from remote parts of the world that we had never heard of and, at times, we resort to a discussion of geography and history with the herbarium staff to satisfy our curiosity.

To think that many of these plants crossed oceans to be stored for dozens or hundreds of years is quite humbling. They are the fruits of botanists who travel the world to catalogue and annotate their findings on a piece of archival paper. The information contained in the collected specimen is crucial to the progress of research. That’s why scientists go through such lengths to collect more data.

A small perk of working with old specimens is that they often come wrapped in a newspaper from their time of collection. It’s interesting to see the age of the dried plants and to gain an appreciation of their historical context. Once, I opened a bundle wrapped in a Ugandan newspaper so old that the images were added manually before being printed, instead of being inserted digitally. I then wondered how far technology has progressed. The newspapers also tell other stories, for example the news items, prices of products, etc., 50 or even 100 years ago. So, there is another kind of history in a herbarium collection.

Quirks aside, there are some more serious undertones to the practice of mounting plants. Truthfully, I feel like it is a declining practice. With the growing emphasis on molecular biology in research facilities, the value placed on plant preservation or mounting is dwindling. Although understandable, as genetic analyses can be more lucrative, it’s a shame that plant collecting and mounting is losing attention.

There will always be demand for mounted specimens as they are reflections of botanical history. They give researchers eyes-on contact with their subject of botanical research. Familiarity with the plant of study is paramount to creating quality research. Furthermore, the practice of plant collecting underlies botanical methods laid out by the famous Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus, from the start.

Plant mounting connects the botanical community. It’s a reliable way of building relationships between universities while building on the communal body of knowledge. We just have to make sure not to lose sight of its importance. Students like me who work in such facilities have also built up relationships with one another and with the staff of the unit as well as the volunteers who come once a week to help in this process of preserving biodiversity.

Plant mounting makes the botanical community grow tighter. It’s a practice that has been used for hundreds of years, and will continue to be used well into the future.

I learned a lot not only about botany but also history and geography while working in The Ohio State University Herbarium.

About the Author: Martin Stuessy is an undergraduate senior at The Ohio State University, majoring in Philosophy.

Mites and moths

August 8 2016August 7, 2016

Following some earlier blogs about recently acquired collections I present to you here the Treat collection. This collection was assembled by Asher E. Treat a researcher at City University of New York and the American Museum of Natural History, also New York. This collection is one of the best in the world for mites associated with Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). Mites have been found associated with most terrestrial and many aquatic organisms, but when it comes to insect hosts, mites on Coleoptera (beetles) and Hymenoptera (bees and wasps) are clearly the most numerous, diverse, and well-known. Still, Lepidoptera have a variety of associated mites.

The Acarology Collection acquired this collection 4 years ago, some years after Treat’s death. The collection consisted of about 37 slide boxes of exceptionally well labelled microscope slides and half a dozen insect drawers of pinned moths (all labelled as hosts of specific mite specimens). The Lepidoptera are being processed at the Triplehorn Insect collection, while we, the Acarology collection, have been working on processing (mostly databasing) the slides. This is proving to be a major job.

Image of a female of Dicrocheles phalaenodectes, the moth ear mite

Treat got interested in mites associated with moths after finding mites in the ears of noctuid moths. In the process, he figured out the quite amazing life histories of some mites associated with these moths. The most famous is Dicrocheles phalaenodectes, the moth ear mite (family Laelapidae).

These mites break through the tympanic membrane of the ear of the moth and form small colonies inside the ear. By itself not too surprising, but the interesting part Treat discovered was that these mites are always found in one ear only, rarely if ever in both ears. In a way this makes sense. By breaking the tympanic membrane the mites make the moth deaf in that ear. Moths need their hearing to avoid predators (for example bats) so a deaf moth would be easy prey. However, a moth with one functional ear is still able to avoid bats, perhaps not as well as if it had two functional ears, but close enough. Which leaves the question: how do the mites manage to limit infestations to one ear?

Treat did many careful observations and follow-up experiments on this aspect and found that the mites have a very specific set of behaviors ensuring only one ear will be parasitized. The first female to get on a moth (nearly always a fertilized female, the immatures and males do not colonize) crawls to the dorsal part of the thorax, explores a little, after which she proceeds to one ear. Any future colonizers will first go to that same dorsal part of the thorax of the moth and follow the initial female to the same ear. It appears the mites lay a pheromone trail that guides newcomers to the already infested ear, and away from the uninfested one.

Drawing of relative positions of mites in a moth ear

To complete the cycle, young females leaving the ear initially wander around the hosts body (mostly the thorax), congregating around the head at night. They leave the moth by running down its proboscis when it is feeding on flowers. On the flowers, the mites wait for their next host.
Another mite family that is specialized on Lepidoptera, the Otopheidomenidae, is also parasitic, and they will also show up near the ears, but they do not pierce the tympanic membrane, so they do not cause deafness. Unfortunately, we know much less about them, Treat was never able to study their behavior. A range of other mite families have representatives that are regularly found on Lepidoptera, but they are not specialists at the family level: Ameroseiidae, Melicharidae, Erythraeidae, Iolinidae, Cheyletidae, Acaridae, Carpoglyphidae, and Histiostomatidae. That list excludes the occasional “vagrants” that can be found on moths, but that are unlikely to be living on them for extended periods of time. All in all, quite a diverse community.
For those interested in knowing more, Treat wrote a book “Mites of Moths and Butterflies” (1975, Cornell University Press) that is a rare combination of good scholarship (especially natural history) and readability.

Title page of Treat’s book on moth mites

Treat was very careful and noted things like host specimen numbers (if available), which allows current researchers to track down the exact moth from which a given mite came.

This is currently a common approach, but Treat started this in the 1950-ies. And there is more. Based on Treat’s label data we know not only the name of the hosts and the specific locality, but also gender of the host, whether the left or right ear was infested, and the exact part of the body the mites were found on. So we have excellent information, directly from the slides, showing that Proctolaelaps species (family Melicharidae) are nearly always found near the base of the palps [as an aside, Proctolaelaps is a bit of an unfortunate generic name, combining “procto-” = anus and “laelaps” = hurricane; presumably the name

Slide from the Treat collection

refers to a relatively large anal shield]. Such complete data are fantastic for future research, but they also mean a lot more work processing these slides, as every slide has lots of unique data. I want to thank George Keeney, part-time curator of the acarology collection and a series of volunteers, Ben Carey, Rachel Hitt, Mitchell Maynard, Ben Mooney, Jake Waltermyer, and Elijah Williams, for their hard work in accessioning this material.

About the Author: Dr. Hans Klompen is professor in the department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology and director of the Ohio State University Acarology Collection.

Butterflies going digital

July 25 2016August 8, 2016

Last year the Triplehorn Insect Collection received a large donation of butterflies from Mr. David Parshall. More than 50,000 pinned specimens, and many thousands more in paper envelopes. You might have read about it on the Pinning Block (here and here.) We have also posted some photos of the collection move on Twitter.

We have specimens of all insect orders and from all regions of the world, but because we never had a faculty or staff who specialized on Lepidoptera, our moth and butterfly collection was not nearly as big as, for example, our beetle or leafhopper collections. This has changed with the addition of the massive Parshall donation.

Afrodite fritillary, <i>Speyeria aphrodite</i>, dorsal view.

Aphrodite fritillary, Speyeria aphrodite, dorsal view.

Afrodite fritillary, <i>Speyeria aphrodite</i>, ventral view.

Aphrodite fritillary, Speyeria aphrodite, ventral view.

The Parshall collection is a complete collection of the butterfly and skipper species found in the state of Ohio. It really stands out, though, because it also contains a huge number of specimens collected in the Arctic Canada and Alaska. (Imagine chasing butterflies in Churchill, Manitoba with the very real threat of polar bears around you! Makes the butterfly hunt just a little more interesting, don’t you think?)

Limenitis, admiral butterflies.

The National Science Foundation has recently funded a large project called the “Lepidoptera of North America Network” (LepNet). This project, which just began this month, is a collaborative effort of 29 institutions across the United States with the goal of making 2.1 million butterfly specimen records freely available on the Internet. If that were not enough, LepNet also aims to produce over 95,000 images of the moth and butterfly species that these data refer to. The project is being coordinated by Northern Arizona University, and the Triplehorn Insect Collection will participate through a subcontract to “digitize” the Parshall collection.

Digitization, for us, means capturing and storing the information contained on each specimen label and storing it in our xBio:D database. And from there, to the world!

Every specimen in a collection has (or should have!) a label with information on where it was captured, when, and by whom. Often we find additional biological data on the labels, like the host plant that an insect was feeding on, the habitat in which it was collected, or the method by which it was collected.

Lycaenidae butterflies showing specimen labels.

Taken together, all of these bits of information tell us a lot about the geographic distribution of species going as far back as the late 19th Century, the flight period of the adults, and much more. We have not even scratched the surface of all the knowledge we can obtain from biological collections. On July 13th a story was published in the New York Times about a team of ecologists using these same data for plants to find out how many different tree species exist in the Amazon Forest (the researchers found over 11,000!).

Digitization can also mean taking pictures of the specimens. But with millions of butterfly specimens in collections we cannot reasonably take and store several pictures of each and every one of them. So the goal of LepNet is smaller, but 95,000 is still a big number.

The Triplehorn collection’s own contribution to LepNet is more modest, but important nevertheless. The Parshall collection’s strength in Arctic butterflies is particularly interesting and even before we had fully unpacked the collection after the move the specimens were already being used by scientists (see Warren et. al., 2016).

In an era of climate change, knowing where those butterflies used to be found in years and decades past will give a good impression of the impact of environmental change.

Drawer full of colorful Lycaenidae butterflies.

Reference:

Warren, Andrew D.; Nakahara, Shinichi; Lukhtanov, Vladimir A.; Daly, Kathryn M.; Ferris, Clifford D.; Grishin, Nick V.; Cesanek, Martin; Pelham, Jonathan P. 2016. A new species of Oeneis from Alaska, United States, with notes on the Oeneis chryxuscomplex (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae). The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera (The Lepidoptera Research Foundation, Inc.) 49: 1–20

About the Author: Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Detective Work and Rare Collections II

July 22 2016July 21, 2016

Continued …

What did the once hidden collections contain?

The Hildreth Collection contained a total of 84 different species of freshwater molluscs, 64 of which were from the Ohio River System, 12 from other river systems, and 8 specimens from other places around the globe such as France.

The original shipping label for the Hildreth and Holden collections as sent to Dr. David H. Stansbery, emeritus Curator of Molluscs, from H.R. Eggleston.

In 1828, Hildreth published his Observations on, and Descriptions of the Shells found in the Waters of the Muskingum River, Little Muskingum and Duck Creek in the vicinity of Marietta in the American Journal of Science Vol. XIV, 1828. In it Hildreth wrote about the abundance and distribution of twenty-six species of the molluscs found in Marietta Ohio. Luckily some of the text clearly references parts of his actual collection, and it was possible to figure out the original shell’s location by comparing the two.

The most interesting part of Hildreth’s 1828 publication is where he wrote about a species called Dysnomia foliata, now known as Epioblasma flexuosa. This particular species, according to the notes and letters he left behind (as well as the many specimens he sent to other collections all over the USA), was relatively abundant. It is now extinct and no one has seen it since around 1900. How did something once so abundant disappear? Maybe someone will eventually figure it out…

How do we know when the specimens were collected?

As Hildreth added specimens to the collection, he recorded the scientific names for each of them. Scientific names often change over time as new taxonomic research is done and new methods become available. Thus a particular scientific name for a species can be used as a time stamp and, in this case, allowed us to estimate a date range for collection.

One of the papers left behind by Dr. David H. Stansbery regarding his study of the collection. This is his tally of the dates that species names were being used.

When all the names in the Hildreth collection where tallied up by Dr. David H. Stansbery, emeritus Curator of Molluscs, the story became clearer: The absolute most recent name, Quadrula fragosa, was from 1835. It is, therefore, likely that the collection itself ends a few years after that. My best guess, after going through the Marietta College database of his collected correspondence, is that the collection was set aside in 1840. That is the date when his letters stop mentioning shell exchanges and instead start focusing on geological coal surveys. I also found the first mention of a shell exchange in a letter in 1824. This indicates that, to the best of our current knowledge, the collection was made over a time-span of around 15 years.

The Holden Collection was the smaller collection of the two, made by a Mr. William Holden. It consists of either one or a few collection events from the Ohio River at Marietta in the year 1879. The Holden collection, therefore, constitutes a very rare look at the nature of the Ohio River naiad (freshwater mussel) fauna of that region between the time of Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth (1825-1840) and the time of Dr. Arnold E. Ortmann (1900-1927).

A letter from 1977 found among the documentation relating to the collections.

Ortmann, in his monograph on the Naiads of Pennsylvania, lists records of all Ohio River species of Pennsylvania present in the Carnegie Museum, but does not seem aware of the existence of the Holden Collection. This makes sense, if the collection had been sealed up in a wall between that time and WWII when it was finally discovered.

It does certainly look like this collection’s story has been told before, but unfortunately everyone I tried to track down in reference to it has long since passed away.

About the author: Sara Klips is still the Mussel Fairy and wishes more people realized how engaging shell bound mollusks can be. She hopes that you know that the “eye stalks” on slugs are called tentacles, and that you realize that filmy plastics can never be put in the recycling bin.

Detective Work and Historical Collections

July 18 2016July 15, 2016

One of the big challenges of freshwater natural history is that it is hard to determine what exact animals were present in rivers before modern collections began. Preservation of pristine freshwater environments has been almost impossible as anything upstream affects everything downstream. Our zoological museums are a physical catalogue of the historical wildlife in an area and a guide for where our habitat reconstruction goals should be set.

Physical collections are fragile. It’s easy to lose data somewhere along the line and have the specimens themselves become nothing more than physical curiosities. It’s even easier to have an extensive and meticulous collection fall into the hands of disinterested heirs and be lost to us. Specimens need to be cared for properly to maintain their quality, and the longer it has been since they were collected, the less likely it is that the historical value is maintained. Occasionally these collections are saved via thoughtful preservation by some concerned individual or institution or, much less often, by a fortuitous fluke of storage through a period when, had it been accessible, it might well have been destroyed.

A collection of old labels, now dissociated from their original specimen.

A perfect example of this kind of fortuitous preservation is represented by two collections, The Hildreth and Holden Collections, currently located in our Bivalve Collection. These two collections were discovered together at Marietta College, Ohio. Few details exist today regarding the exact discovery, but some information has been preserved. Everyone directly involved with the discovery has, as far as I can tell, passed away long ago without publishing the details of the find.

It’s a weird twisting tale and, I believe, it deserves to be informally recorded here.

Our next post will fully detail the relevance of this collection and its history, but for now let’s just set the scene…

Continue reading →

Am I or Am I Not a Dinosaur? Skull Identification Quiz

July 15 2016July 15, 2016

Do you love dinosaurs? Many of us grew up in the shadow of Jurassic Park Mania, and went through a dino-crazed phase during our childhood. Still, can you identify a dinosaur when you see one? There seems to be a lack of public awareness of what is actually classified under the label of Dinosauria.

Test your knowledge with this tetrapod skull ID quiz and check your answers below. The truth may surprise you! We would love to get comments from you. Which of these skulls is the most challenging?

1. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

2. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

3. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

4. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

5. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

6. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

7. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

8. Dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

9. And finally, dinosaur or not a dinosaur?

(all photos are by G Terrell 2016)

Answers

1) Yes! This is the skull of Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis. Herrerasaurus was an early theropod dinosaur from the late Triassic period, and one of the first predatory dinosaurs. (Image Credit: http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/22200000/Herrerasaurus-dinosaurs-22232913-1438-588.jpg)

2) No! This meter-long skull is from the living crocodilian, Gavialis gangeticus, or gharial. Gharials can be easily distinguished from crocodiles and alligators by their incredibly thin jaws, which are an adaptation for catching fish.

(Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharial#/media/File:Gharial_san_diego.jpg)

3) Yes! This skull is from the Keel-billed Toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus), a colorful Latin American member of the toucan family Ramphastidae. Living birds comprise the only extant members of the dinosaur family tree. Dinosaurs are not really extinct at all, there are approximately 10,000 species of living birds. Keel-billed Toucans may seem to have cumbersome bills, but they are surprisingly lightweight and useful for thermoregulation.

The closely related Chestnut-mandibled Toucan Ramphastos swainsonii (Credit: G. Terrell 2016)

4) No! This skull belongs to the early synapsid of the Permian period, Dimetrodon. Dimetrodon is often (mistakenly) labeled as a dinosaur in the popular media. In fact, Dimetrodon is a member of the lineage that eventually lead to mammals. So, as mammals, we humans are far closer relatives of Dimetrodon, than Dimetrodon is of any dinosaur.

(Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dimetrodon_grandis.jpg)

5) Yes! This skull is from the late Jurassic dinosaur, Archaeopteryx . Often recognized as the “first bird,” Archaeopteryx was actually just one of many feathered, fluffy, winged dinosaurs that flitted around the forests of the Jurassic. Though probably not as well as modern birds, it is thought that Archaeopteryx was capable of briefly-sustained flight.

(Image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Archaeopteryx_lithographica_by_durbed.jpg/1280px-Archaeopteryx_lithographica_by_durbed.jpg)

6) No! This is the skull of the rhinoceros iguana (Cyclura cornuta), a species of lizard in the family Iguanidae. Rhinoceros iguanas live on the island of Hispaniola, where they can reach up to 54 inches in length.

(Image Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_iguana#/media/File:RhinoIguanaMay07Pedernales.jpg)

7) No! This skull is the skull of a Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis, a species of lizard in the monitor lizard family Varanidae. Komodo dragons are the largest living lizards. They reach lengths of up to 10 feet! These large lizards have been known to prey upon water buffaloes.

(Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon#/media/File:Komodo_dragon_(Varanus_komodoensis).jpg)

8) Yes! This is the skull of the Great Hornbill, Buceros bicornis. Great hornbills are large, mostly frugivorous birds of South Asia in the family Bucerotidae. Like many extinct dinosaurs, hornbills possess seemingly-bizarre head ornamentation that is only present in adult individuals.

(Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_hornbill#/media/File:Great-Hornbill.jpg)

9) Yes! This skull belongs to the famous Velociraptor mongoliensis. This late cretaceous predator, made famous by the Jurassic Park franchise, was a member of the Dromaeosauridae. This family of dinosaurs is extremely closely related to birds. All members of this family were fully feathered, possessed wings, and would have appeared to be “weird birds with teeth and tails.”

(A Velociraptor with prey. Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor#/media/File:Velociraptor_restraining_an_oviraptorosaur_by_durbed.jpg)

About The Author: Grant Terrell is a second year student in Evolution and Ecology at The Ohio State University. He works as a research assistant in the Tetrapod Collection at The Museum of Biological Diversity.

Virtual tour

June 24 2016June 23, 2016

I greatly enjoy the National Museum of Natural History virtual tour. It allows people from all over the world to view some of the exhibits that the museum has to offer. Of course it’s not as gratifying as visiting the museum in person, but it is pretty cool.

The MBD does not have exhibits and is not regularly open to the public. Nonetheless there’s a fair amount of interest from the local community about the work we do here and the collections we hold. We frequently receive requests for tours of the facility, from local schools to OSU classes to family groups. Tours allow visitors to view some of the many specimens and objects held by the various collections and to talk to some of the faculty and curators associated with the collections. I had the pleasure of leading a number of these tours in recent months. I tried to document each tour, taking photos and posting on social media.

Here are some of the photos I took during the most recent tours. Not as fancy as a virtual tour, but hopefully cool enough to get more people excited about a future visit to the Museum of Biological Diversity.

Note that there are almost no photos of the tour groups when they are at the Triplehorn Insect Collection. I can never manage to answer questions about the collection I curate and to take photos at the same time. Oh, well!

Enjoy!