In the News: To the Moon and Back

Fig.1. Full Moon photo taken from Madison, Alabama, USA (Credit: Gregory H. Revera, 2010)

These special collections contain over 400,000 bumblebees, around 5,000 marine mammals, 350 varieties of blueberries, and samples that are out of this world. Read about exciting research coming out of museum halls and herbaria for this week’s Follow Friday:

• Minerals found in lunar samples collected by the Apollo 15 mission can reconstruct the history of the Moon: “The Shocking History Of The Moon,” Science (03 July 2015) 

• Insect collections helped to show a clear connection for the first time between climate change and bee population size: “Climate Change Shrinks Bumblebee’s Range,” Student Science (06 August 2015)

• Amber fossils revealed a 20 million year span of stability in lizard communities in a remarkable example of species resilience during environmental change: “Trapped In Amber: Ancient Fossils Reveal Remarkable Stability Of Caribbean Lizard Communities,” Smithsonian Science News (27 July 2015)

• Where do you keep your whale bones? With more than 5,000 specimens, the marine mammals collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is one of the largest in the world: “In L.A. There’s A Warehouse Filled With Whale Bones,” Smithsonian Magazine (20 July 2015)

• Did you know that there are 350 varieties of blueberries in this gene bank? You can taste some of them on a repository tour: “Taste 100 Blueberry Varieties, Tour Fruit Gene Bank,” The Oregonian (11 July 2015)