Field Museum

Teachers: can *we* take a field trip to your classroom? 🚌 🏛 Our Harris Learning Collection has over 400 mini dioramas, 60 experience boxes, and 1 replica T. rex skull ready for members to loan! 🦖 Find a piece of the Field to share with your students. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/grqGAWVb

Maybe tropical birds are born with structural color, maybe it was migration. 🐦 ✨ OR BOTH! Brightly-colored birds like these birds-of-paradise often live in the tropics—but did colorful feathers evolve in these warmer  regions, or did the colorful ancestors of these birds fly in from other places? 🤔 To find out, Field scientist Chad Eliason and his fellow researchers did a LOT of math: the team built a database of 9,409 species of birds and their coloration in videos, photos, and illustrations, and combined it with a pre-existing family tree of DNA to develop a modeling system to illustrate how these shimmering feathers spread across the globe. 🧬🌳 A surprising picture appeared: while colorful birds from outside tropical regions *did* flock there millions of years ago; all birds are descendants of one common, iridescent ancestor. 🤩 Read more via Popular Science. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/g2ZsS7k7

We’re ISO an experienced, cross-disciplinary team leader in our Keller Science Action Center to set and implement priorities, achieve science-driven objectives, and represent the Center to partners, funders, and donors. Apply now. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eJCwNJuk

Theropod Family Reunion! 🦖💙 🦅 Before the Chicago Archaeopteryx (temporarily) flies behind the scenes, our Chicago peers helped us reconnect our extinct dinos with extant relatives. Thanks to our feathered friends and their teams: 🐧: Pops, Pedro, and Pepe the Humboldt penguins at Brookfield Zoo Chicago 🌙: Migratory black-crowned night herons at Lincoln Park Zoo 🦜: Serrano the green-winged macaw, visiting the Field from Shedd Aquarium Learn more about the newest fossil in our family, returning this fall. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gjsbhUd6

Museum Spa Day 🦎 🧖♂️ Even scaly replicas need a facial every few decades. 💅   This model of a marine iguana was crafted between the 1920s and 1960s from pigmented cellulose nitrate with a camphor plasticizer—compounds that crack and degrade over time. ⏰   Thanks to a little TLC from our Conservation Team, the breaks in the reptile’s skin have been mended, adhered, repainted—and 3D scanned (check out that grey-colored copycat)! 💻 By imaging these older models, we’ll have the data needed to create new versions from updated materials: preserving history for the next generation of natural history lovers. 💙   📸 : Dan Kaping & Mackenzie Fairchild

Of the 13 known-to-science specimens of the world’s first bird, the Chicago Archaeopteryx will be the first to tell us this incredible animal’s full story. 🦖 🦅 While our visitors are getting their last looks at our newest rock star before it (temporarily) flies back behind the scenes on August 1, we’re remembering our fossil prep and research team’s first glances at X-rays of Archaeopteryx: the moment they understood it was the most complete specimen ever discovered. 🤩 Watch now via WTTW/Chicago PBS. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dSUCYJPZ

Tag yourself 🫠 Quetzalcoatlus is here to remind you that even 18-ft-tall flying reptiles sometimes need a disconnect and take a breather. 🫶 This image is from our pterosaur model’s move to our Searle Lounge in April. After some R&R and help from mammalian friends in exhibitions, its big beak is back in place. 👏

Meet our 2024 Summer Interns! 👋 Every year, we offer hundreds of hands-on internships to students interested in exploring careers in science, nonprofit management, and beyond. 🔍 We can’t wait to share some of the projects they’re working on — stay tuned! 👀 Learn more about internships at the Field. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gAwjQuH4 

It Came From the Swamp! 😱 40 million years before the first dinosaurs evolved, a ferocious predator lurked in swampy waters. Meet Gaiasia jennyae, the swamp creature with wide, interlocking jaws and a toilet seat-shaped head! Learn more about what this fossil teaches postdoctoral researcher Jason Pardo about tetrapod evolution via The New York Times. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gBm7N6Zu 🎨: Gabriel Lio

📣 Chicago Public Schools Teachers: Join us for a 2-day, interdisciplinary professional learning experience! We’re here to help you meet the new requirements of the TEAACH Act through a science and social-emotional focus with connections to Hawaiian ways of teaching and learning. Register now. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eQHaQNjn