Story Topics | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

Illustration of a long-legged crocodile-looking reptile looks at a mammal carcass on an ancient tropical islands

Research and Collections

How Ancient Crocodile-Like Predators Ruled the Islands of the Caribbean

NHM's scientist discovers that sebicids, ancient land-dwelling crocodile-like beasts, reigned over the West Indies as apex predators after vanishing from South America

The lower jaw of a dire wolf from La Brea Tar PIts resting on a piece of paper with the words "Last known real dirw wolf in the world!!" Aenocyon dirus lower jaw 13,082 years old' written on it

Dire Wolves: Sorry, They’re Totally Still Extinct

NHM and Tar Pits experts weigh in on why dire wolves have not, in fact, been successfully cloned, and the surprising perils of de-extinction

A skeletal looking Vinciguerria mabahiss under a microscope and black background

Research and Collections

The Lights Below

A new study shines a light on the mechanics of bioluminescence in the rare fish Vinciguerria mabahiss and we explore some of the other fish lighting up the deep

A male house finch with a little red plumage around its beak and breast alongside otherwise gray feathers being held still by a person's hand

Research and Collections

Bird banding, Wildfire Smoke, and the Nature Gardens

Researchers band birds and collect feathers in the Nature Gardens to study the impacts of wildfire smoke on birds.

Solving a Juniper Seed Mystery at La Brea Tar Pits

How identifying a mysterious fossil seed reveals Ice Age climate change

A paleoart rendition of Eupachydiscus sp. by Cullen Townsend.

Research and Collections

Collections Staff Help Ammonites Come Out of Their Shells

Uncovering how digitization and collections management made a groundbreaking extinction study come to life

The Newly Described Andean Storm-Petrel Is Just Our Type (Specimen)

Get a behind-the-scenes look at Ornithology's type cabinet and meet some of the specimens used to describe new bird species

Walking With Giant Sloths

Take a (virtual) summer road trip to White Sands National Park to explore the fossilized tracks of giant ground sloths

Naturalist

Baccalaureates in Biodiversity

Meet the first graduating class of NHMLAC’s extraordinary mentorship and apprenticeship program—UNLAB (Understanding Nature and L.A. Biodiversity). Discover what eight college grads learned about fish, snails, and other creatures of the natural world from ancient times to the present—and how to protect them in the future.

Research and Collections

Dispatches from the D-ARK

Follow Curator of Malacology Jann Vendetti with updates from an expedition into the deep sea caves around Japan's Minami-Daitō Island

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