News

Carrie Albertin awarded a 2026 Klingenstein Fellowship

August 11, 2026

Carrie Albertin, MCZ Curator in Malacology, was awarded a 2026 Klingenstein Fellowship for her project Mechanisms of Neurogenesis in the Largest Invertebrate Brain. The Klingenstein Fellowship Awards in Neuroscience supports early career investigators...

MCZ Specimen Sparks New Scientific Insights

July 23, 2026

After 80 million years, a giant fossil jaw has quite a story to tell. Back in the age of the dinosaurs, Tylosaurus proriger was a fearsome predator — a bus-sized aquatic reptile with a crushing snout, daggerlike teeth, and knack for swallowing prey whole...

Save the Date for Half-Earth Day 2026!

July 08, 2026

Explore the work of naturalists past and present, enriched by insights from art, literature, the humanities, and Indigenous communities. Half-Earth Day honors the legacy of nature and global efforts to understand, protect, and sustain the living world...

How to Discover a New Species

May 20, 2026

The Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) featured recent graduate Arianna Lord (PhD '26, Gonzalo Giribet, Advisor) in the Griffin GSAS News. Lord, a native of New Zealand, came to the United Stated to pursue undergraduate studies at...

On the Path to Research, Teach, and Curate

May 12, 2026

The FAS Current featured Lauren Bartel, IB Concentrator in Scott Edwards Lab, who joined the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture student board as a first-year and stayed her full four years helping to increase public understanding and appreciation for...

Birding Helped Him Soar in Evolutionary Science

May 22, 2026

The FAS Current featured Ashwin Sivakumar, Integrative Biology Concentrator in Scott Edwards Lab, detailing how his interest in nature shaped his academic pursuits and his work with Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. Ashwin's work in the Edwards Lab...

How Venom Kills — and Can Lead to Cures

June 08, 2026

One of the newest Curators in the MCZ, Professor Mandë Holford, is featured in the Harvard Gazette. Research in the Holford Lab focuses on venomous sea snails and cephalopods, their toxins, and how those compounds might be turned into medicines.

Discovering the Evolutionary Secrets of Fish Brains, Using Museum Specimens

May 11, 2026

For every two living vertebrates on Earth, one is a fish – 95% of which are ray-finned fishes such as salmon, tuna, goldfish, and trout. Ray-finned fishes comprise roughly 35,000 species and thrive in environments ranging from deep-sea trenches to alpine...

Wendy Valencia-Montoya awarded the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize

April 20, 2026

Congratulations to Wendy Valencia-Montoya (PhD '25, Naomi Pierce, Advisor) awarded The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize. The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize the accomplishments and future...

How Researchers Unlocked the Respiratory Secrets of the Trilobite

April 23, 2026

For more than 270 million years, trilobites were among the most successful and diverse creatures on Earth, with over 22,000 known species spanning the Paleozoic Era. Yet, despite their abundance in the fossil record and their presence on every continent...

A 500-Million-Year-Old Clawed Predator Rewrites the Origin of Spiders and Horseshoe Crabs

April 02, 2026

It had been a long day of teaching for Rudy Lerosey-Aubril . As a reward, he returned to cleaning an intriguing Cambrian arthropod fossil he had recently received for review. At first, the specimen showed all the expected characteristics of its time – yet...

Embracing Variability in Comparative Physiology

March 30, 2026

The recent issue of the journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, compiled studies that explore the issue's theme "Embracing variability in comparative physiology: why it matters and what to do with it." Yangfan Zhang, postdoctoral...