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Florida Museum of Natural History
@floridamuseum.bsky.social
5.8K followers 130 following 440 posts
The Florida Museum of Natural History inspires people to care about life on Earth. Located on the University of Florida campus, we are also the state museum.
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floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Ana Lopez recently presented at the Metabolomics Association of North America (MANA) Conference at Banff, Canada, and networked with peers:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🔬 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a person is taking a selfie with a rippling lake ringed by thick grasses and tall pines as well as a tall mountain behind her a group of people in hiking clothes are standing on a slope of bare granite rocks and tall pines with the sprawling view of a misty valley and mountains in the background
January 28, 2026 at 6:55 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Scientist Spotted 🐚 Our paleontologist Michal Kowalewski collaborated with Tom Frazer @cmarinescience.bsky.social on a Curious Kids article for the @us.theconversation.com called 'Where do seashells come from?' to talk about these popular marine skeletons:
theconversation.com/where-do-sea...
🌊🏖️
Where do seashells come from?
Seashells are the skeletons of sea creatures – and they’re older than you might think.
theconversation.com
January 27, 2026 at 9:54 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Skyla Sheehy attended the Entomological Society of America's 2025 meeting, her first conference, to present her research on aquatic moths:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🐛 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a person is standing with arms held behind them in front of a large poster covered in boxes of small text and charts in an open conference room of some kind
January 27, 2026 at 6:40 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Anastasia Garavaglia recently attended her first conference, the 2025 Entomological Society of America meeting, to present, learn & network:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🐛 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a person is standing behind a large wooden podium in a conference room with a screen behind her showing pictures of caterpillars and colorful insects and unclear graphs
January 26, 2026 at 10:25 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Lungelo Khanyile recently visited the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Herbarium to further their research on the evolution of African flora. More:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🦋 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a person in stylish jeans, a black hoodie and earphones over a cap is standing with arms raised in the middle of a corridor lined with shelves full of papers under fluorescent lighting far above
January 23, 2026 at 6:25 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Ava Johnson presented at the 2025 Entomological Society of America’s Annual Meeting, attended talks & workshops, and networked with peers.
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🦋 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a shy looking person with a long braid and wearing glasses and a plaid scarf is standing in front of a wall covered in wooden frames holding collections of colorful pinned butterfly specimens
January 22, 2026 at 9:05 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Museum Resource 🗺️ Historical Archaeology Artifact Gallery

Browse a selection of artifacts from our Historical Archaeology collection online, including tableware, jewelry, book clasps and horseshoes:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/art...
three small golden pendants have tiny images likely religious like saints and people praying a small section of ceramic looks like a stylized bird made from terra cotta with a hole in the back as if for a spout three very ancient and worn looking metal objects seem to be old keys with large heads laid in a row on blue fabric
January 21, 2026 at 8:50 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Tom and John Emmel and Sterling Mattoon officially began their work on “The Butterflies of California” book in 1974.

Now, more than 50 years after they began, the book draft has officially been published online and is freely available to the public:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/the-...
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a shallow wooden tray has eight smaller white cardboard boxes in it with rows of carefully preserved and pinned small butterflies, either white with dark freckles or yellow with orange wing tips, seen from directly above
January 20, 2026 at 9:48 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Snack size and party size.

Thorny skates have a large distribution, but there's been a mystery about why individuals of this species along the coast of North America come in two distinct sizes, irrespective of sex.

Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/thor...

Illustration by Jorge Machuky
an illustration of an ocean scene with a number of skates, flat looking shark-like animals with large wings and long tails, swimming around near smaller marine animals along a sandy floor and a large shark in the distance
January 16, 2026 at 6:33 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Scientist Spotted 🦏 Advait Jukar, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology here at the Museum, quoted in a National Geographic article about woolly rhino tissue recovered from the stomachs of mummified wolf puppies in northeastern Siberia:
www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...
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Researchers recover a woolly rhino genome from inside a frozen wolf's stomach
The work marks the first time an Ice Age animal’s complete genome has been recovered from tissue preserved inside another ancient animal.
www.nationalgeographic.com
January 15, 2026 at 7:07 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Museum Collections 🪝 Faunal Fishhook Gallery
Learn the terminology of fish hooks, browse the gallery and have a look into how our researchers investigate the cultural history of our state through these rare discoveries:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/flarch/colle...
a light bone colored hook has a shallow bend area and straight shank, and looks to be made from bone a very dark brown hook has a fully oval shaped body and is made from wood or bone or some organic material a brown hook with a straight shank and a very thick area at the lower cup of its bend seems to be made of wood or bone
January 14, 2026 at 5:36 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
“We had to go on a rescue mission and get as many fossils out as possible, and we got a lot of them,” Lazaro said.
Story:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/pale...

A friendly competition between colleagues revealed an unusual story about hutias, giant barn owls & burrowing bees in a Caribbean cave.
Paleontologists find first bee nest fossils made inside fossilized bones
Key points  Paleontologists working in a cave on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola have discovered the first known instance of ancient bees nesting inside preexisting fossil cavities. Burrowing ...
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu
January 13, 2026 at 4:31 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Museum Resource 🐍 Florida Snake ID Guide
Easy visual ID and searchable tool for learning about our state's snakes including habitat, range, diet & lookalikes.

Featured: Eastern Hog-nosed Snake (Heterodon platirhinos)
Full info and explore more:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-snak...
NON-VENOMOUS
Eastern Hog-nosed Snake
NON-VENOMOUS Other common names Eastern Hognose Snake, Puff Adder, Hissing Adder, Spreading Adder, Blow Viper, Hissing Sand Snake Basic description Most adult Eastern Hog-nosed Snakes are about 20-33 ...
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu
January 9, 2026 at 8:45 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Online Exhibit 🪶 Rare, Beautiful & Fascinating

Feature: Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

"The Passenger Pigeon is maybe the most dramatic extinction story that we have in North America," said David Steadman.

🎧 Read the story + listen to Dave: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/100-years/ob...
a taxidermy pigeon is soft gray brown with a coral breast set against sticks and a white background
January 8, 2026 at 9:12 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Museum Resource 🐟 Fishes in the Fresh Waters of Florida
Explore our state's freshwater fish species and click through to collection records, photos and map.
Shown: Swamp Darter (Etheostoma fusiforme), native to Florida's freshwaters
🔗 More info & browse:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fis...
two small, elongated fish specimens with freckles on their shiny golden bodies and lobed fins a screenshot showing search criteria fields down the left side of a map of Florida with red pins clustered heavily across the state and northward
January 6, 2026 at 10:07 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Exhibit #SciArt 🎨 Florida Pleistocene
Paleontologists have found Pleistocene fossils in almost every county in Florida, speaking to our state’s rich biodiversity during this period.

🗝️ Check out the exhibit art + key, and fossils from our collections:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/blo...
a painting of an nature scene with a jaguar chasing small boar-like animals in the foreground and further out on the savannah are deer, elephants and other large animals a key to an illustration of a nature scene with many animals represented by yellow shapes with numbers on them match to the list in the linked post
January 5, 2026 at 9:43 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Our scientists and students had a busy year! Catch up on our 2025 research news on our website:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/
December 31, 2025 at 6:03 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Research 2025 #YearInReview 💧 Biologists found an amphibian called a caecilian hiding away in a Florida canal in 2019. The species is native to South America, but a recent study by Coleman Sheehy and team show that they're now firmly established in Florida.

Paper:
journals.ku.edu/reptilesanda...
a scan of a long snake-like animal curled up shows its skull and spine and a few objects that could be food in its digestive system
December 23, 2025 at 5:52 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Last call! We're hiring 👉 Invertebrate Paleontology Collection Manager
📌 Apply by Jan 5, 2026

This position will manage the extensive collections, conduct fieldwork, participate in public outreach & pursue external funding.

🔸 Full info + application: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/inver...
a group of people in matching t-shirts are standing at a table while a man holds up one of several trays of shallow boxes with different types of shells sorted neatly into them close up of a large spiral shell fossil with ridged bands that grow more pronounced as the spiral gets larger there is a person in outdoors clothing kneeling at the top of a long sandy slope covered in many small dark shells with a cloudy sky overhead
December 22, 2025 at 2:58 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Scientist Spotted 💧 Akito Kawahara (@dr-akito.bsky.social), director of our McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, spoke to Scientific American about this rare sighting of lachryphagy - tear drinking - this time involving moths and a moose:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/phot...
Moths Seen Drinking Moose Tears for the First Time Ever
Moths sometimes drink the tears of other animals, but the behavior has mostly been observed in the tropics. New photographs show only the second observation outside of that area
www.scientificamerican.com
December 19, 2025 at 9:44 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
2025 #YearInReview 👏👏👏 It was a big year for our faculty, staff and students! Alongside notable faculty and staff changes, our researchers and student scientists were recognized with a wide variety of awards for their work.

Read some of these stories: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/topi...
a man in a button-down is posing for a portrait in front of a mammoth skeleton in a museum lobby a man is talking to a group of college students while standing around a fossil of a set of very large curved horns a person in gloves is in an office lab space examining several unclear dark brown objects from a set of shelves directly adjacent to the work space two people are holding large plaques with rows of names and two people are standing on either side of them looking incredibly proud
December 19, 2025 at 4:41 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
Local students connected with our archaeologists as they prepared for an upcoming robotics competition. The team's robot-building challenge includes an innovation project: identifying and proposing a solution to a real-world problem in archaeology.
Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/stud...
several middle school age kids are standing around a man holding a tray of pieces of ceramic plates in a storge room filled with shelves of boxes and a cluster of adults in the background
December 18, 2025 at 9:24 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
A friendly competition between colleagues revealed an interesting story about hutias, giant barn owls and burrowing bees in a Caribbean cave.

Paleontologists find first bee nest fossils made inside fossilized bones
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/pale...

Illustration by Jorge Machuky
an illustration shows light spilling through a round cave hole above and illuminating the cluttered interior with hanging roots and jumbled detritus in the distance while in the near ground several bees are active around the surface of a cross section showing short tunnels into the soil with larvae at the ends and one leading to a section of jaw bone and an inset illustration showing a larvae in a crevice of bone
December 18, 2025 at 6:26 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
We are proud to present our fiscal year 2024–2025 annual report. This past year has been one of tremendous change and growth for the Florida Museum!

For a full review of our faculty accomplishments, staff and student activities, financials & more:
📘 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/feature/annu...
a photo of a heavy thicket of mangrove roots topped with waxy green leaves reflected by the glassy water surface that they are growing from overlayed with a logo that is a stylized FM with Florida Museum next to it and a heavy text for Annual Report
December 17, 2025 at 4:02 PM
floridamuseum.bsky.social
From the field ✈️ Sajan K C and Anisha Sapkota conducted a field survey of Giant Skippers across western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
Read about it: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...

🐛 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers at the Florida Museum.
a stubby brown butterfly with big black eyes and soft gray scales all over its stout body and triangular wings is at rest on one of several white rocks in red sand
December 11, 2025 at 3:14 PM