Meet the red-necked pademelon (Thylogale thetis). A relative to kangaroos and wallabies, this critter is a marsupial species that lives in parts of eastern Australia. The shy animal inhabits forests, grassland, or scrub, where it forages for grass, roots, and leaves, typically during the night. Feeding during darker hours helps conceal this animal from predators like dingos and raptors.
Photo: Jim Moore, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
Have you ever seen a Spruce Grouse (Canachites canadensis)? Known for their tameness around humans, these birds inhabit a wide range across North America’s forests including parts of Canada and the United States. Vibrantly-colored males use their plumage in courtship displays: They can snap their tail feathers open with a whooshing sound, swish from side to side, and “dance” to attract the attention of mates.
Photo: George Hachey, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
Welcome back to Trilobite Tuesday. The Walcott-Rust Quarry, of upstate New York, is renowned for producing some of the best-preserved Ordovician trilobites in the world. Abundant examples of at least 18 species of trilobites, most of which have been studied extensively, have been discovered at the site. This 1.5-in- (3.8-cm-) long Ceraurus pleurexanthemus is one of the quarry’s most well-known species.
Behold the beautiful Great Blue Turaco (Corythaeola cristata)! Growing up to 30 in (76.2 cm) long, this forest-dwelling bird can be found in parts of Central and West Africa such as Uganda and Guinea. It feeds on a diet that includes fruits, leaves, and insects. While it isn’t a long-distance flier, this bird uses its wings to flutter through the trees—rarely descending to the ground. It can most often be spotted in small groups.
Photo: Nik Borrow, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
Have you ever seen a turtle frog (Myobatrachus gouldii)? Named for its uniquely shaped body—which resembles a turtle without a shell—this amphibian inhabits arid parts of southwestern Australia. It can grow up to 1.9 in (5 cm) long. The turtle frog uses its muscular forelimbs and unwebbed feet to tunnel through the sand headfirst, digging burrows as far as 3.9 ft (1.2 m) underground.
Photo: Andrea Ruggeri, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
While pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, they did live alongside dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era—and flourished for more than 150 million years before becoming extinct. See Tupuxuara leonardii up close in the Museum’s Hall of Vertebrate Origins!
This Fossil Friday, meet the Warren mastodon: the first complete American mastodon (Mammut americanum) skeleton found in the United States! This fossilized proboscidean was discovered in a bog in Newburgh, New York in 1845. It was remarkable for being preserved in the position in which it had died some 11,000 years ago—standing upright with its legs thrust forward and its head tilted upward, likely gasping for air under mud in which it had become mired. Shortly after its excavation, the Warren mastodon’s tusks began to decay. But thanks to Museum preparators, the tusk fragments were reassembled and restored to their proper length of 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m).
See the Warren mastodon up close in the Hall of Advanced Mammals! The Museum is open daily from 10 am–5:30 pm. Plan your visit.
Photo: D. Finnin / © AMNH
Who’s this little ball of fluff? Meet the Tomtit (Petroica macrocephala). There are five subspecies of this bird; each inhabits a specific island or island group in New Zealand: North Island, South Island, the Chatham Islands, the Auckland Islands, or the Snares Islands. It munches on small invertebrates like spiders, beetles, and moths, as well as on the occasional fruit. It’s known for its curious personality, as it often perches on a branch to observe others or to scan the area for a meal.
Photo: Jon Sullivan, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr
Meet the Cephea cephea: a jelly so nice they named it twice. This ocean dweller is sometimes called the cauliflower jellyfish because of its resemblance to the vegetable. It can reach over 20 in (51 cm) in diameter! Jellies have bodies that include two transparent layers: an outer one for protection and an inner one for digesting food. Between the two layers, you’ll find a watery gel—in fact, their bodies are more than 95 percent water!
Photo: Derek Keats, CC BY 2.0, flickr
Don’t let your roars go unheard this Election Day. Gather your pride and go out and vote! Did you know? Considered the most social of cats, lions live in prides that consist of one or more males, several females, and cubs. African lions breed at 3.5 years old, and the cubs are born spotted at birth. Adult male lions weigh about 375 pounds (170 kilograms), while females average 265 pounds (120 kilograms). See this diorama up close in the Museum’s Hall of African Mammals.
Photo: R. Mickens/ © AMNH
Behold a black cat of a different kind: this melanistic serval (Leptailurus serval). Also known as the “giraffe cat,” servals have the longest legs in proportion to their body size of any feline. Found in parts of Africa, this predator can jump more than 9 ft (2.7 m) into the air to snatch birds in flight. Individuals like the one pictured, which are rare in the wild, are affected by a genetic mutation called melanism, which results in their dark coloring. Scientists think there are some advantages that come with having a dusky coat, including being able to more seamlessly blend in with the darkness of the night and take in heat more efficiently in the Sun.
Photo: Stan Rullman, CC BY 4.0, iNaturalist
If you were born in November, topaz is one of your birthstones! Can you name the others? Weighing nearly 600 lbs (270 kg), this tremendous topaz is one of the largest single crystals of topaz in any museum in the world! This specimen is just one example of how large crystals in pegmatites can grow. If you look closely, you’ll notice that its upper faces are covered in small, stepped bumps and mounds. The mounds are growth hillocks and are caused by imperfections in the crystal structure called screw dislocations—where new material is added in a spiral!
Photo: D. Finnin / © AMNH
Learn about the science behind fall foliage with Daniel Hooper, a postdoctoral fellow at the Museum. The next time you’re out leaf peeping or bird watching, give thought to carotenoids—the incredible pigments that make our worlds a little rosier. 🍂🦩🍁
🎃 Happy Halloween from your friends at the Museum! Are you ready to roar into the holiday like a T. rex? With 4-ft- (1.2-m-) long jaws and powerful bone-crushing teeth, T. rex was one of the largest and most fearsome carnivores of all time. In fact, this dinosaur could bite with about 7,800 pounds of force (34,500 N)—the equivalent to the weight of three cars! No living animal, and few extinct ones, could rival its bite. T. rex didn’t chop or grind its food; it swallowed chunks whole…
Photo: A. Keding / © AMNH
🦇Museum Curator of Mammalogy Angelo Soto-Centeno shares updates from his recent expedition to Puerto Rico, where he and a team of local and international researchers led a paleontological excavation and bat diversity inventory. The aim of this work was to explore new locations to examine the present, or living, and past, or fossil, communities of bats and identify species that have become extinct in recent times.
They found three species of extinct bats that were lost in the last 4,000 to 1,600 years—including insectivore and nectarivore bats!
It’s Trilobite Tuesday! Fossilized trilobites have been found in an array of colors. This tonal variation is mostly due to the presence of specific minerals, which can replace the trilobite’s calcite shell over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Those minerals replace the trilobite's original shell in a wide range of colors including shades of black, brown, red, orange, and yellow... such as this strikingly preserved Wenndorfia from the Devonian of Morocco.
With Halloween right around the corner, we’ve got a “spooky” fossil for you! This mummified arctic ground squirrel was frozen into the permafrost some 20,000 years ago. Usually, only hard skeletal parts of an animal, such as bones or teeth, are preserved as fossils. But the dry, frozen conditions within permafrost “freeze-dried” the squirrel and prevented its skin from decaying!
Photo: © AMNH
