March 30th, 2021, 6:00AM / BY Anna Torres
Participate in the City Nature Challenge by spotting and recording animals and plants in your city starting Apr 30. (Katja Schulz)
A special performance of “A Passion for the Planet,” the City Nature Challenge and an evening with Howard Youth; stream these free programs and more this April through the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Sixth Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival
Ongoing The film “Garifuna in Peril” will be screened alongside other films during the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival. (Ruben Reyes)
Celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity by tuning in to the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival. This year, the Festival features 45 films in 39 languages from around the globe, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives. The Festival will be hosted entirely online with monthly screenings through May.
Send For most scuba divers, few places underwater match the visual thrill of a kaleidoscopic coral reef teeming with colourful fish. For Jeff Milisen, a marine biologist and photographer in Kona, Hawaii, there is no better place to dive than an open stretch of deep ocean.
Chennai:
At night. âThereâs a whole lot of nothing,â he said. âThereâs no bottom, no walls, just this space that goes to infinity. And one thing you realise is there are a lot of sea monsters there, but theyâre tiny.â
Of course, there are big monsters, too, like sharks. But the creatures Milisen is referring to are part of a daily movement of larval fish and invertebrates, which rise from the depths to the surface each evening as part of one of the largest migrations of organisms on the planet. The emerging hobby of taking pictures of them is known as blackwater photography.
The dinosaur-killing asteroid reshaped Earth s tropical forest sciencenews.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sciencenews.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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VIDEO: What happened in the tropics when an asteroid hit the planet and how did it shape today s rainforests? view more
Credit: Monica Carvalho
Tropical rainforests today are biodiversity hotspots and play an important role in the world s climate systems. A new study published today in
Science sheds light on the origins of modern rainforests and may help scientists understand how rainforests will respond to a rapidly changing climate in the future.
The study led by researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) shows that the asteroid impact that ended the reign of dinosaurs 66 million years ago also caused 45% of plants in what is now Colombia to go extinct, and it made way for the reign of flowering plants in modern tropical rainforests.
March 16th, 2021, 6:00AM / BY Abigail Eisenstadt
Dom Pedro aquamarine was cut from a 100-pound crystal that was mined in the late 1980s. It weighs around 4.6 pounds, making it one of the largest aquamarine gemstones in the world. (Donald E. Hurlbert, Smithsonian)
For those who study what happens when magma and crust collide, igneous rocks like pegmatites are a welcome sight. But in addition to holding clues about Earth’s mineral and geologic processes, pegmatites deposits are known for containing diverse and richly colored mineral crystals that can be cut into spectacular gems. One of the largest if not best example is the Dom Pedro Aquamarine.