American Museum Of Natural History Research Articles

Human identification and global patterns of craniofacial variation

Research into the genetic admixture proportions from different geographic areas in the United States through autosomal markers demonstrates a complex process with differences in the extent of European contributions to Southern and non-southern African-Americans. There is a global mass migration crisis of people escaping war, starvation, and displacement. These demographic shifts and migration have further increased human identification of undocumented border crossers. What contribution can craniofacial measures make to this global problem? Data for seven West African samples were collected as part of the 3D-ID, Geometric Morphometric Classification of Crania for Forensic Scientists software. Six of the West-African samples were collected from the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and the Angolan sample was collected from the Bocage Museum in Lisbon. Samples from Diaspora populations including modern African Americans, and African Slaves from Cuba are also analyzed and compared.

Designation of lectotypes for the Mexican species of Andricus described by Alfred Kinsey and comments about some generic synonymies (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae)

Abstract The Kinsey collection of gall wasps deposited in the American Museum of Natural History was studied. Some species of the genus Andricus were originally described based on cotypes: A. furnaceus, A. incomptum, A. marmoreus, A. peredurus, and A. tecturnarum. The type series of A. furnaceus and A. peredurus were previously studied and lectotypes were designated. Lectotypes are here designated for A. incomptum, A. marmoreus, and A. tecturnarum. Comments on the type series and photographs of the lectotypes and galls of these species are included. Also some generic synonymies and some other Andricus species are discussed.

‘The bullet and the crust’: A World War I exhibition on nutrition and food conservation at the American Museum of Natural History

ABSTRACTA pioneering food conservation exhibition (1917–1918) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) was the result of collaboration between the Museum's Departments of Anthropology and Public Health. The AMNH was the only major natural history museum in the United States to mount an installation featuring guidelines for wartime food conservation. Its innovative displays included models demonstrating 100 calorie portions and nutritional values of commonly eaten foods, as well as examples of unutilised and underutilised food sources such as seaweed and seafood, and unfamiliar native food crops (e.g. maize). This exhibition foreshadowed modern day concerns with food sustainability and proved to be an important example of how a scientific museum could contribute to the war effort. It was also a significant departure from old-fashioned natural history displays and contemporary dioramas, as well as an experimental foray for the Museum into public policy issues of the day.

The financier who bought all of nature

Kemp features Lionel Walter Rothschild, a useless banker who spent a mountain of cash creating an unparalleled natural history collection--then blew it spectacularly. Rothschild collected biological specimens from far and wide in an era when exotic travel was a difficult, costly and dangerous job; one the timid baron was happy to outsource. For 40 years, Rothschild ran his natural history empire from Tring. The museum and his mistresses had taken a huge toll on his finances, and his extended family was in no mood to bail him out. So he decided to sell his most valuable asset--his superlatively stocked, irreplaceable collection of bird skins--to the American Museum of Natural History in New York

Selection of a lectotype for Brachycrus laticeps mooki Schultz and Falkenbach (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Merycoidodontidae)

In 1968 Schultz and Falkenbach described a new oreodont subspecies, Brachycrus laticeps mooki, from a locality 11 km (7 miles) southeast of Fort Logan, Meagher County, Montana. As a holotype for this new taxon, Schultz and Falkenbach (1968:369) designated both American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) specimen number 21321 (a skull) and AMNH 21322 (a left ramus). Although the citation of two separate catalog numbers as a holotype is highly unusual, Schultz and Falkenbach believed that the specimens cataloged under both numbers represent only a single individual. The use of the term ‘holotype’ was appropriate, therefore, although it would have been more common practice to place elements believed to represent a single individual under a single catalog number. Schultz and Falkenbach did not give a justification for their opinion that AMNH 21321 and AMNH 21322 represent the same individual, although they stated this belief in two publications (1941 and 1968).

Mitogenomes of the four Agathymus holotypes collected 55 years ago

Giant-Skipper butterflies from the genus Agathymus (family Hesperiidae) are unusual as their caterpillars feed inside Agave leaves. Relationships among Agathymus taxa and their names (i.e. if they are species, subspecies, or synonyms) are poorly understood due to phenotypic similarity. DNA sequences are promising to clarify the taxonomic questions, but it is challenging to sequence name-bearing types that are usually old specimens with poorly preserved DNA. Using next generation sequencing, we assembled mitochondrial genomes of four Agathymus mariae group holotype specimens collected more than 55 years ago and housed pinned and dry in the American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY). We compared the holotype mitogenomes to those we obtained from fresh A. mariae specimens and the sister species Agathymus micheneri. All but A. micheneri mitogenomes were highly similar to each other (more than 99% identity), suggesting that the four names chinatiensis, lajitaensis, rindgei, and gilberti proposed by H. A. Freeman in 1964 may not refer to species-level taxa. The mitogenomes grouped eastern populations (rindgei and gilberti) together and apart from the western populations (nominal mariae, chinatiensis, and lajitaensis). Mexican A. micheneri differs by about 2.5% (about 5% in the COI barcode region) from A. mariae, and is likely to be a distinct species.

Exploding star accounts for ancient flash

A 25-year hunt for bright spot in the sky first seen almost six centuries ago has traced it to stellar explosion--and answered long-standing question about such cosmic events. On 11 March 1437, royal astronomers in Korea noticed that a guest star began to be seen between the second and third stars of Wei-- Wei being group of nine stars in the constellation Scorpius. Now, Michael Shara at the American Museum of Natural History in New York has discovered its origin: kind of explosion called classical nova.

Unconstitutional limbo: why the Smithsonian Institution may violate the separation of powers doctrine

With the opening of the National Museum of African-American History, people are once again coming in mass to the National Mall to see the Smithsonian’s newest edition. And just about everyone in America knows of the Smithsonian--its name recognition is well over 90% in public surveys. Each year 30 million people visit the Smithsonian museums along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of American History, and the National Museum of Natural History among them. But is that about to change? The Smithsonian is an odd government entity. Despite its private, non-profit status, the Smithsonian still receives federal funds, is chartered by an Act of Congress, employs a majority civil service staff, and operates through a board overseen by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Vice President, and legislators from the United States Senate and Congress. As such, the Smithsonian has been deemed a governmental entity is some instances and a private entity in others. However, with a new bill being introduced to Congress and recent Supreme Court precedent regarding government instrumentalities, the Smithsonian may face dissolution of its current supervisory board less it run the risk of violating the separation of powers doctrine.

What does it take to sustain a productive partnership in education?

What does it take to sustain a productive partnership between a public school system and local cultural institutions? This article describes the genesis, evolution, and continued success of a long-term partnership between the New York City Department of Education, the American Museum of Natural History, and seven other leading cultural institutions, promoting inquiry-based science instruction in local middle schools.

“The Most Important Dress in the Country”: The Rhetoric of Glamour in the Smithsonian’s “The First Ladies”

ABSTRACTThis article examines the exhibit “The First Ladies” in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The exhibit, composed primarily of inauguration gowns and china settings from state dinners, has existed since the early twentieth century and is one of the Smithsonian’s most popular and controversial exhibits. I argue that “The First Ladies” relies on a rhetoric of glamour that emphasizes the perfection, ease, and mystery of those who hold this role. This rhetoric constructs a subjectivity for viewers as spectators appreciative of the elite culture on display that perpetuates a masculine way of seeing. The overall impact depoliticizes and domesticates the role of first lady, sidestepping questions of female political power while locating women in a benign, domestic realm. This article contributes to our understanding of how glamour invites us to understand the public memory of powerful women.

Robert Broom’s prehistoric sketches: conveying objects through illustration in the early-twentieth century

ABSTRACTThis article examines the images sketched by the palaeontologist Robert Broom (based in South Africa) in his correspondence to the scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in the early-twentieth century. The drawings in Broom’s correspondence demonstrate a number of features around ‘the object habit,’ most notably how the construction and exchange of images were crucial aspects of studying, defining and understanding scientific objects, and built networks and relationships between scientists. The article examines how claims to truth and authority in early-twentieth century scientific discourse could operate around objects, and how private correspondence could simultaneously serve as an avenue to present apparently ‘objective’ data, emphasise key features of analysis, or engage in more speculative theorising.

Opening the black box: an open‐source release of Maxent

This software note announces a new open‐source release of the Maxent software for modeling species distributions from occurrence records and environmental data, and describes a new R package for fitting such models. The new release (ver. 3.4.0) will be hosted online by the American Museum of Natural History, along with future versions. It contains small functional changes, most notably use of a complementary log‐log (cloglog) transform to produce an estimate of occurrence probability. The cloglog transform derives from the recently‐published interpretation of Maxent as an inhomogeneous Poisson process (IPP), giving it a stronger theoretical justification than the logistic transform which it replaces by default. In addition, the new R package, maxnet, fits Maxent models using the glmnet package for regularized generalized linear models. We discuss the implications of the IPP formulation in terms of model inputs and outputs, treating occurrence records as points rather than grid cells and interpreting the exponential Maxent model (raw output) as as an estimate of relative abundance. With these two open‐source developments, we invite others to freely use and contribute to the software.

Shifting Perspectives: The Man in Africa Hall at the American Museum of Natural History at 50

The “Man in Africa Hall” at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) opened on June 8, 1968, after seven years of preparation. Colin Turnbull, hired in 1959 as the Museum's first curator of Af...

Anthropology Now and Then in the American Museum of Natural History: An Alternative Museum

You know how they say in certain museums, history comes alive?Yeah.In this museum … it actually does.What are you talking about?Everything in this museum comes to life at night.Night at the Museum,...

Hispaniolan snakes of the genus Dromicus (Colubridae)

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the variation in, and systematics of, this species. We have been able to study 601 specimens of D. parvifrons . In addition to specimens in the Albert Schwartz Field Series (ASFS) we have borrowed pertinent material in the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), United Sta tes National Museum (USNM), American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan (UMMZ), Carnegie Museum (CM), and the Senkenberg Museum (SMF).

Mind the Gap

The curatorial is a discursive formation that has emerged from critical engagements with curating as a practice of object presentation and a rejection of dominant practices of knowledge formation traditionally associated with the museum. In this article, I argue that the curatorial in fact makes use of the relational potentialities of the museum display, but, in so doing, is in danger of overlooking the critical opportunity disavowed by traditional museology that lies at the heart of the museum: the irreducible gaps of the exhibitionary encounter. To unfold both the relational power of the museum’s display mechanisms and the ever-presence of distance in moments of exhibitionary proximity, I use an early critique by Mieke Bal of the American Museum of Natural History. Arguing that what Bal makes evident is the impossibility of total coincidence in practices of museum ‘showing’, I turn, in conclusion, to the work of artists Fred Wilson and Jade Montserrat to suggest how the gaps within exhibition display may be (re)practiced.

The History and Distribution of ṭāb: A Survey of Petra’s Gaming Boards

The History and Distribution of <i>ṭāb</i>: A Survey of Petra’s Gaming Boards

Taxonomic revision of the genusCrassicrusReichling &amp; West, 1996 (Araneae: Theraphosidae: Theraphosinae), with the description of additional keels on the embolus

Since its original description, the theraphosid spider genus Crassicrus Reichling & West, 1996 has not been revised and no new species have been described. While reviewing material deposited in the Mexican National Collection of Arachnids (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City) and the American Museum of Natural History (New York, USA), we encountered specimens corresponding to four new species of Crassicrus from Mexico. In this revision, we include a redescription of the genus and its type species, C. lamanai Reichling & West, 1996, and describe four new species: C. bidxigui, C. tochtli, C. cocona, and C. yumkimil. Species habitat data are provided, as well as identification keys for males and females. In addition, new keels on the male embolus were identified and are described. In the Theraphosinae, the presence of one retrolateral keel has been reported, but in Crassicrus, there are two or three retrolateral keels, and a new taxonomical nomenclature for these keels is proposed. The genus Crassicrus is recorded from Mexico for the first time, increasing the number of known theraphine genera in the country to 16.

Exploring the Concept of a “Legacy” Collection: A Study on German World War I Paper Textiles at the National Museum of American History

Using a collection of surplus German military objects composed of woven paper from World War I in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History as a case study, this article questions the value of keeping objects that no longer support the current mission statement of a museum, or if they ever did. It does not aim to answer definitively such a tough question, as a multitude of factors and stakeholders are involved with such a decision, but rather it seeks to bring this subject matter to the fore of collections and curatorial management, to explore best practices, and to examine if such best practices are being readily followed. The objects’ history, manufacturing processes, materiality, conservation concerns, and significance are explored in an effort to build context around the objects and to determine the appropriateness of their occupancy within the museum.

Digest: Splendid (continental) radiations.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, vertebrate paleontologist and long-time president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, once referred to adaptive radiation as “one of the essential features of divergent evolution … the idea of differentiation of habit in several directions from a primitive type … . This idea of radiation becomes a means of interpretation, and a way of imagining the relations of extinct and living faunae. As perceived by [E. D.] Cope, it applies both on a small and on a vast scale” (Osborn 1902). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved