Forgotten for decades, rediscovered watercolor collection features hundreds of Florida plants
Botanist Mark Whitten was rummaging in an old drawer in the University of Florida Herbarium for tracing paper when he…
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New Earth systems institute to communicate environmental issues to Floridians
The University of Florida has launched the Thompson Earth Systems Institute, an outreach-focused center that aims to advance public understanding…
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Best way to learn about island biology? Live on an island
Mud in your shoes and a squirming turtle in hand may not sound like a typical college class, but for…
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Houses of silk, poop and plants: Meet the sack-bearer moths
Ryan St Laurent, a doctoral student at the Florida Museum’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, studies an obscure, strange…
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Butterfly expert Thomas Emmel has died
The Florida Museum is shocked and saddened by the passing of Thomas Emmel, our colleague and friend, who died over…
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40 years of friendship, 70,000 specimens: Amateur entomologists donate lifetimes’ worth of butterflies and moths
As a 4-year-old, butterfly net in hand, Ed Knudson set out to catch insects in his neighborhood. Little did he…
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Teachers receive fossils, create lesson plans at museum workshop
Florida Museum of Natural History researchers and amateur paleontologists teamed up to give K-12 teachers a crash course that came…
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NSF grant will improve digital access to museum vertebrate fossils
The Florida Museum of Natural History recently received a $500,000 collections grant from the National Science Foundation to improve online…
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New butterfly species discovered nearly 60 years after it was first collected
In 1959, a then-teenage lepidopterist Thomas Emmel collected 13 fawn-colored butterflies in the highlands of Mexico. Nearly 60 years later,…
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#MuseumLife, Bald Eagle Specimen
Bald eagle Scientific name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus Specimen: UF-O-52443 Although bald eagles were on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss…
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