News

Mansi Srivastava awarded a Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award

September 21, 2020

Congratulations to MCZ Faculty-Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, Mansi Srivastava, awarded a 2020 Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award for her project Comparing development and regeneration to uncover mechanisms for maintaining regenerative ability in adult animals.

"The Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award was created in...

Artist rendering what the shrimp-like Cambrian species may have looked like. Illustration by Xiaodong Wang

Micro-CT lets scientists see telling 3D details in arthropod evolution

September 15, 2020

For the past five years, MCZ Faculty-Curator Javier Ortega-Hernández has been collaborating with colleagues in China to learn more about arthropod evolution by using micro-CT scanning to create 3D models of fossils and view details that would be impossible to see otherwise. Read more about the ongoing project in the...

Wilson’s Long-fingered Bat, by Piotr Naskrecki

New bat species named for Edward O. Wilson

August 18, 2020

A new species of bat has been named in honor of Edward O. Wilson, Faculty Emeritus in the MCZ. Wilson’s Long-fingered Bat, Miniopterus wilsoni, is named in recognition of Prof. Wilson's support and facilitation of biodiversity research at Gorongosa National Park over the past decade. The new species is described in the journal Acta Chiropterologica.

HMSC Connects! Podcast features MCZ staff and history

August 17, 2020

HMSC Connects! Podcast is a weekly podcast that goes behind the scenes of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture to talk to the scholars, researchers, collection keepers, exhibit designers and other fascinating individuals who keep the museums humming along and create a compelling array of exhibits and programs.

Since the podcast launched in May 2020, two have featured the MCZ collections. Andrew...

By combining photogrammetry and CT scanning, the Blaschka sea creatures become 3-D models

August 14, 2020

Photogrammetry is a common method of creating 3-D models of objects, but the qualities of glass make photogrammetry impossible with some of the Blaschka models of marine invertebrates. Peter Fried, professor of applied physics at NYU, along with colleagues from Cornell and the MCZ, combined photogrammetry with CT scanning to create 3-D models that anyone can view and inspect. The method is published in...

Scott Edwards cycles across U.S. to raise awareness for BLM and Black Birders Week

August 3, 2020

MCZ Faculty-Curator of Ornithology, Scott Edwards, took advantage of this unprecedented summer to partly fulfill his dream of biking across the country and to raise awareness for Black Lives Matter and Black Birders Week. You can follow his adventure on Twitter and read more about it in the...

Tomographic models of Leanchoilia illecbrosa juveniles from the Cambrian (Stage 3) Chengjiang biota of South China

MicroCT reveals detailed head morphology of arthropod fossil

June 26, 2020

A new paper in Current Biology shows the head morphology of the species Leanchoilia illecebrosa - a member of Megacheira, an extinct group of arthropods. This is the fifth in a series of publications that represent an ongoing collaboration between...

Vertebrate Paleontology Technician and Preparator position

June 25, 2020

We are currently accepting applications for the Vertebrate Paleontology Technician and Preparator position.

This role operates and manages the Paleontology Preparation Laboratory within the Museum of Comparative Zoology and cares for fossils in the vertebrate paleontology collection.

...

Scott Edwards elected to the American Philosophical Society

June 11, 2020

Congratulations to Scott Edwards, MCZ Faculty-Curator of Ornithology, who was elected to the American Philosophical Society!

Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. The APS is unusual among learned societies because its Membership is comprised of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines...

Though museums are closed, the work continues

June 8, 2020

MCZ collections have been closed for three months but MCZ curatorial staff have continued to work their usual schedules from home. With paper files in hand they have been busy imputing and updating information in our specimen database, MCZbase.

Learn more about what we, and other Harvard museums, have been doing during this time in the...