Fig.1. This N’Dama cattle herd in West Africa may hold the answer to livestock diseases which are sweeping across Africa and threatening food security (Credit: ILRI via Wikimedia, 2008)
Museums, herbaria, and genebanks all work to preserve the past so we can prepare for the future. Read about collections-holding institutions that must be protected in order to understand biodiversity, preempt epidemics, study dinosaurs, and more:
- Fossils hidden in the Natural History Museum of London for more than a century could answer long-standing and controversial questions about dinosaur physiology: “‘Blood Cells Found In Dino Fossils,” BBC News (09 June 2015)
- Artifacts dating at least 45,900 years ago suggest that humans were using modern tools before they reached Europe: “Tools Weren’t Invented In Europe, They Were Carried There 50,000 Years Ago,” National Geographic (03 June 2015)
- Natural history museum collections shed new light on previous estimates of species around the world: “Crowded House? New Findings On Global Species Richness,” ScienceDaily (01 June 2015)
- The fields of conservation, systematic biology, and even medicine rely heavily upon herbaria and the botanists that staff them. Unfortunately, herbaria around the U.S. are shutting down and students are losing interest: “Fewer Students Study Botany, More Plant Collections Closing,” San Diego Union-Tribune (25 May 2015)
- Scientists struggling to combat animal diseases sweeping across Africa have proposed “preemptive breeding” to protect livestock populations and food security: “Preemptive Genetics Girds Farmers For Climate Extremes And Disease,” Scientific American (10 June 2015)
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