An NC astrophysicist's chance discovery turns out to be a rare, double-ringed galaxy 359 million light years from Earth.
NC Museum of Natural Sciences
Hundreds of Tiny Roommates
Study Surveys the Insects in Raleigh-Area Homes
May 11, 2016
Sorry, North Carolina, you are not alone in your homes.
That, perhaps, should not come as a surprise. Hardly a week goes by where we don’t find a bug or spider hiding in a dark corner of our kitchen or bedroom, but many people probably don’t wonder how many others there might be—while many others don’t want to know.
Bays of Mystery
Carolina Bays provide one of the most intriguing geologic mysteries around.
Think about it. Not only are scientists still trying to determine how Carolina Bays were created, the exact number of Carolina Bays is also unknown.
Jerry Reynolds, the Carolina Bay expert with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, tells me he’s seen estimates ranging from 400,000 to 2.5 million bays in the Southeast United States. Bays can be found from Maryland to Georgia, but the majority of Bays are found in North and South Carolina.
Carolina Bays
Nobody knows how Carolina Bays were formed. They look like swamps and wetlands from the ground, but from the air they take on a mysterious uniform shape and directional alignment.
Ace of Clubs
How the Ankylosaurus Got Its Signature Tail-Club
December 3, 2015
Ya Dig?
The more I learned about the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' discovery of the mystery dinosaur in Utah, the more amazed I became that the fossils were discovered at all.
That’s because while it is easy to find the full femur bone of a creature that lived 98 million years ago, it’s not that simple to spot a piece of a bone laying on the rocky ground.
Mystery Dino
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences researchers discovered fossils of an unknown dinosaur while working in Utah. Using only a few bones, they'll learn the creature's size, diet, age and other features, and this mystery dinosaur could become the museum's first holotype, the example with which other species are described.
Digging Dinos
Watch as a paleontologist and her team of volunteer paleontologists uncover the remains of a new type of dinosaur. Evidence suggests that the desert mountains in Utah, where the bones were found, was once a lush wetland. Researchers use specific methods to carefully uncover the details of not only what the world was like in the past but also how this individual lived, died and rotted.
I Miss Brontosaurus...
There are times some folks might think I grew up in the age of the dinosaurs, although a check of my driver's license and other official paperwork continues to prove I am not quite that old.
Nevertheless, I am here to say I miss Brontosaurus.
Actually, I called him Bronto. He was a green sauropod dinosaur with a long neck and tail. I played with him when I was little and will tell anyone who will listen that Bronto was very cool.
But then science came along.
Where The Wild Things Are
Researchers at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences are using camera traps, and enlisting citizen scientists, to study wild animal populations, behavior, habitat, and in a long term study, how human activity is affecting animal populations in a given area.