Harvard students traveled to Utah over spring break last month for the @harvardoeb.bsky.social course The History and Evolution of Life on Earth, led by our Faculty-Curator in Invertebrate Paleontology Javier Ortega-Hernández and funded by the MCZ.

Check out this stunning fossil and life reconstruction of the chelicerate Megachelicerax, which lived 500 million years ago! @invertebratepal.bsky.social @harvardoeb.bsky.social Credit: @cambrianlife.bsky.social and Masato Hattori/Harvard University. Learn more at NYT https://nyti.ms/4tu8DnQ

Are you a biologist with a focus on malacology or invertebrate zoology? The MCZ is looking to hire a Curatorial Assistant in our malacology department! Apply at https://bit.ly/4sbHCnL

The 2026 spring deadline for Ernst Mayr Grants supporting research in animal systematics is tomorrow April 1! Aluska Santos from Brazil's Federal University of Paraná received funding to visit collections in Chile and Venezuela for her project on a small family of leaf beetles, Lamprosomatinae.

A peek into our mammalogy collection featuring marsupials, sloths, and the primates that manage the collection - Madeleine, Mark and Nina. photo by Juan Giribet

Harvard students traveled to the Florida Keys over spring break for the @harvardoeb.bsky.social course Biology and Evolution of Invertebrate Animals, looking for creatures like this sea slug. The MCZ funds spring break trips for many OEB courses, adding a meaningful field component to classwork.

Study from MCZ & @harvardoeb.bsky.social reveals surprising totipotency in early worm embryos, going against previous assumptions that because individual cells at this stage have different roles, removing or rearranging them would prevent growth of a complete organism. @currentbiology.bsky.social

MCZ staff have been assisting with cleaning and updating the New England Forest exhibit (featuring MCZ specimens) in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Vitrines (glass display cases) are being added to protect some of the specimens on display that were previously exposed.

A peek into our collections showcasing a Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) specimen. Kodiak bears are a subspecies of brown bear that exist only in the Alaskan Kodiak Archipelago. They are the largest brown bear and comparable in size to polar bears. photo by Juan Giribet

Thanks to the careful work of our curatorial assistants, a valuable holotype (a specimen used when describing a new species) was discovered after being lost for over 90 years! Rediscovery of the enigmatic holotype of Buthus barbouri Werner, 1932 ... Zootaxa at https://bit.ly/4rz3HfY

Meaghan Sorce, Curatorial Assistant in Ichthyology, recently returned from an expedition with the @schmidtocean.bsky.social R/V Falkor off the coast of South America to explore how gut microbiomes shape the fate of carbon. Meaghan collected mesopelagic fish and other specimens for the MCZ.

Applications for our summer GUR grants are due March 16! These grants support faculty-supervised research by Harvard College undergraduates https://bit.ly/4lIg1aO. Aditya Tummala received funding last year for his project Exploring Local Community Involvement in Kafue National Park, Zambia.

MCZ Faculty-Curator @invertebratepal.bsky.social, @cambrianlife.bsky.social and Walker Weyland explored the Red Wheeler Lagerstätte in Utah to better understand the diversity and ecological complexity of the earliest animal-dominated marine ecosystems, supported by MCZ Putnam Expedition Grants.

Congratulations to Wendy Valencia-Montoya!

Never smile at a crocodile, or a gharial! Digitization Manager Jon Woodward takes over 100 images of the uniquely shaped skull of a gharial crocodile for photogrammetry. He will then reconstruct the images to create a 3D rendering of the skull at the request of a researcher.

Is that frog in a harness?! Yes! An automated rotary is used to slowly rotate and capture pictures of this Pipa pipa (Surinam toad) specimen from all angles. Stitching these images together, we created a digital 3D model, which the Toledo Museum of Art used to create a physical model for exhibit.

During the Harvard J-Term course Museum Collections Care, a student inventoried and scanned historical correspondence in our malacology collection, including letters and documents bearing the signatures of prominent malacologists and other researchers.

As part of the Harvard J-Term Museum Studies course, a student restored deteriorated mollusk microscope slides in the Malacology Department. By researching and applying archival cleaning methods, the student transitioned the specimens from degraded paper envelopes to slides that could be digitized.

MCZ Invertebrate Zoology staff worked tirelessly over the past 2.5 months reorganizing over 6,150 spider type specimen lots alphabetically by species name (specific epithet). This project included rehousing the type specimens in standard-sized jars along with updated jar labels.

Discover top and trending #entomology research in BioOne Complete, featuring articles from Arachnology @britishspiders.bsky.social, Breviora @mczharvard.bsky.social, and Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society. Free to read through March 31: bio-one.co/4sSpwch #Bugsky #insects

Congratulations and thank you to Jessica Cundiff for her 25 years at the MCZ! Jessica is the Curatorial Associate of Invertebrate Paleontology and her discipline-specific expertise and deep institutional knowledge strengthen our work and help improve the MCZ in meaningful ways.

Many of our specimens have associated field notebooks, photographs and other documentation that needs care, digitization and conservation. Recently three Harvard Museum Studies students cleaned and updated storage for 35mm projector slides and glass plates in our vertebrate paleontology collection.

Our J-term students are wrapping up projects this week. Many thanks to all supporting MCZ projects this month! Patrick Riordan worked with Amelia Lawson on our NSF-funded grant "InSliDE" and Patrick supported that work this month by focusing on our parasitic worm slides.

Congratulations to MCZ’s Director of Collections Operations Breda Zimkus, recently elected as VP of the Board of Directors of the Natural Science Collections Alliance. Breda will apply her expertise to advancing the NSC Alliance and their community's interests.

It's January and that means that many of our collections are hosting students enrolled in the J-term course Museum Studies. Patrick Riordan is working in our invertebrate zoology collection cleaning and barcoding microscopic slides of parasitic worms, in support of our NSF grant InSliDE.

GUR grants from the MCZ support faculty-supervised research by Harvard College undergraduates and applications for the spring are due on January 26! More information at https://bit.ly/4lIg1aO (background image of past recipient, Annina Kennedy-Yoon, conducting field research in Kenya)

Congratulations and thank you to Alana Rivera, Collection Assistant in Invertebrate Zoology, for her 20 years of dedicated service at the MCZ! Here Alana is shown with a basket star specimen collected in 1893, while participating in ArtsThursdays at the @harvardmuseums.bsky.social

Learn about two new species of frog described in India in this video: https://bit.ly/3NblyLn. James Hanken, Emeritus Professor at @harvardoeb.bsky.social and former Curator in Herpetology, is an author alongside a team of Indian herpetologists including those with ties to the MCZ.

Welcome, Carrie!

Many of our specimens are accompanied by hard-to-read labels, whether due to challenging handwriting, non-latin alphabets or long-outdated names, and our entomology dept took to social media to test entomologists and transcription enthusiasts around the globe to decipher labels from this specimen.

Thanks to focused database efforts and a Japanese visiting researcher's translation assistance, this record for Lutra lutra whiteleyi (the now extinct Japanese river otter) in MCZbase is enriched with valuable information.

Our ornithology department has a rich collection of articulated skeletons - from the Little Spotted Kiwi to the White Stork - that are used for teaching and morphological studies.

This semester the Vertebrate Paleontology Department hosted various tours including the @harvardmuseums.bsky.social Student Board, Harvard students, and the Northwest Building Operations staff. We had two interns, and most recently, VP staff shared paleo facts with the public at HMSC’s Fossil Day.

Caaeteboia amarali has puzzled researchers since the early 19th century, with its systematic affinities unclear. Two specimens were recently discovered in our collection, which were previously misidentified. They were discovered by Omar M. Entiauspe-Neto during his Ernst Mayr Grant-sponsored visit.

Hereptology staff utilize copy stands and ring lights of all sizes to image the specimens in the department. Large specimens require creative imaging methodologies. This rhinoceros iguana was collected in the Dominican Republic in 1929 by Thomas Barbour, herpetology curator and director of the MCZ.

This leafcutter bee from Chile is a solitary bee in the genus Megachile. They build nests with individual cells in which they deposit an egg and food for when the egg hatches. Some bees in this genus cut leaves to line the cells, possibly to prevent the food supply from drying out. #BigBee

MCZ entomologists have uncovered evidence that some of the planet’s oldest seed plants use heat, rather than color or scent alone, to communicate with their pollinators — a discovery that reshapes scientists’ understanding of how early plant–animal relationships evolved. https://bit.ly/48BYjCy

There is a new, smaller-scale exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, featuring MCZ's collection of glass microscope slides. "Making the Invisible Visible: Digitizing Invertebrates on Microscope Slides" walks visitors through the history of the slides to today's digitization projects.

Congratulations to Ashwin Sivakumar (pictured far left), one of five from Harvard named Marshall Scholars. Ashwin is a Harvard sophomore working in the Scott Edwards Lab @harvardoeb.bsky.social and MCZ ornithology, and serves on the @harvardmuseums.bsky.social student board.

Maria Paula visited the MCZ to study type specimens for her taxonomic revision of harvestmen in the family Kimulidae. During her research, she identified at least three new species hiding in lots collected nearly 90 years ago. Her visit was sponsored by an Ernst Mayr Grant https://bit.ly/4kr8m06

A researcher interested in hellbenders, America’s largest salamander species, recently requested the snout-vent length and total length of our specimens. Because they were prepared with many curves and twists, we use a piece of string and a tape measure to record accurate measurements.

MCZ collections recently hosted students from Boston Green Academy and Cambridge Rindge & Latin School during Evolution Day 2025, organized by @harvardoeb.bsky.social to connect high school students with Harvard researchers to provide meaningful and accessible life sciences research experiences.

Each MCZ collection - such as mammalogy or vertebrate paleontology - is curated by a faculty member @harvardoeb.bsky.social. Learn about their research and more about the MCZ in our brochure at https://bit.ly/48pmDHH.

Ticks on an Eel: Museum Specimen is a First of its Kind entomologytoday.org/2025/12/03/t.... Research from @harvardoeb.bsky.social graduate student Kaylin Chong, using a specimen collected over 150 years ago!

Ever dive into a tank of turtles? Herpetology staff did just that as they inventoried over 130 pond turtles as they looked for seven turtles of interest to fulfill a researcher's imaging request. See the resulting database entry at https://bit.ly/48cQRfK Photos by Cynthia Wang-Claypool

This specimen of a male Cyphophthalmus sp. from Ossa Mt., Greece was imaged by Ernst Mayr Grant recipient Panagiotis Kontos during his review of Greek sironids (mite harvestmen) at the MCZ. His research will result in descriptions of new species integrating morphological and molecular data.

We recently wrapped up our NSF-funded CSBR grant which focused on subsampling and cryogenically storing tissue from primary type species across six collections. 14,000 specimens were subsampled and stored in the cryogenic collection - preserving these valuable type specimens for future research!

A recent donation of five specimens of Chilabothrus exsul, the Abaco Island Boa from the Bahamas, marks the first time this species has been deposited into our collection. Collected in 2015 by R. Graham Reynolds, these specimens are now in our database ready for researchers to examine and use.

A new study from @invertebratepal.bsky.social describes a new sea scorpion species that shows these animals were skilled predators much earlier than the fossil record showed! The study is led by Peter Van Roy, Ghent University, & co-authored by OEB PhD candidate Jared Richards. tinyurl.com/bdcwmrws

Digitization Manager Jon Woodward trial-runs a new method of photogrametry to create a 3D model of an articulated Ridley's turtle. Large and delicate specimens like this Ridley's turtle pose unique challenges for three-dimensional imaging due to their size and structural complexities.