The Harvard Art Museums have recreated a historical cabinet of curiosities in the exhibit The Philosophy Chamber featuring MCZ specimens from Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Paleontology and Ornithology collections. Read more info in the Harvard Magazine.
Director James Hanken is featured in Science Goes to the Movies, where he and Faith Salie discuss how animal behavior is depicted in the animated Walt Disney film, Zootopia. Watch to learn more about Prof. Hanken's research subjects, how media portrays animals in general, and amphibian conservation.
MCZ Director and Faculty-Curator James Hanken was part of a team that discovered three new species of miniaturized salamanders. Found in Oaxaca, Mexico, the salamanders are considered endangered. The findings are published in PeerJ and featured in National Geographic.
Combining models with specimens from multiple MCZ departments, the new Marine Life exhibit in the Harvard Museum of Natural History immerses visitors in the New England coastal water environment and presents research from around the world. Read more about the exhibit in the Harvard Gazette.
A recent article in Biology Letters by Thomas Sanger, a former MCZ postdoc, resolves the evolutionary history of the penis. Sanger examined MCZ's precious collection of Victorian-era histological slides of tuatara embryos for his research, which concludes that the penis evolved just once in the common ancestor of mammals and reptiles. Read more about the findings in... Read more about Victorian-era histological slides used to study penis evolution
Jonathan Losos and his colleagues study the evolution of anole lizard species that were caught in amber millions of years ago. They hope to find out how these lizards lived, and to compare them to species that are alive today. Read more in the Harvard Gazette.
Jim Hanken discusses "Linking Collections Globally for Research and Education: The Digital Worm" in a panel discussion on Objects and Collections, a part of the "University As Collector" symposium organized by the Radcliffe Institute. (Prof. Hanken's talk begins at approximately 45 minutes)
Jim Hanken weighs in on the state of natural history collections and their impact on tracking biodiversity using new technologies in a recent article in Nature.
