Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Today is the first day of winter and few species are as well prepared for this season as the snow leopard (Panthera uncia). Well-adapted to living in cold, mountainous environments, snow leopards are found in central Asia and India at elevations ranging between 6,000 feet in the winter to 18,000 feet in the summer. A carnivore and active hunter, snow leopards prey on small and mid-sized mammals that share their mountainous habitat. This can include Himalayan blue sheep, wild goats, marmots, Siberian ibexes, and wild boar, depending on season and range. Adaptations like fur on the undersides of paws to help with grip on uneven terrain and a long flexible tail for balance on steep surfaces aid in hunting. This specimen was collected in India in 1897.

Update: there will be no change to our operating status. In the event of a government shutdown, our museums, research centers, and the National Zoo will remain OPEN through at least Thursday, Dec. 26. Please note that we are closed on Dec. 25. Visit si.edu for updates. Image: Richard Lippold’s “Ad Astra” on view outside our National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

The #FossilFriday and #NationalDayofTheHorse crossover you didn't know you needed Protorohippus venticolum was an early species of horse that lived 52 million years ago. It was small, with four digits on each front foot and three on each hind foot. This specimen is the most complete fossil of this species ever found. The fossil fishes in this in this slab reveal that this horse floated out into a lake after death. This specimen was collected in the Green River Formation in Wyoming.

Left along the margins of a lake around 1.5 million years ago and discovered in northern Kenya in 2021, these fossil footprints record something remarkable - two different ancient human relatives, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, coexisted at the same time and place. Led by Kevin Hatala, associate professor of biology at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, this recently published paper includes contributions from Kay Behrensmeyer, NMNH senior research geologist and curator of vertebrate paleontology. Read more from the researcher team in The Conversation U.S.: https://s.si.edu/3OEIe3Y

Research zoologist Michael Braun and his colleagues have studied manakins for decades. Much of this work has focused on birds living in the Bocas del Toro region of western Panama, a unique region where golden-collared manakins (Manacus vitellinus) and white-collared manakins (Manacus candei) have intermingled for thousands of years. Decades of research in this hybrid zone - a region where multiple species regularly interbreed - has offered glimpses of how boundaries between species are shifting over time and space. Over the past six months, Braun and a wide range of collaborators have published three studies about this region. Read more here: https://s.si.edu/3V6GPqB

Over the past year educators and researchers from the National Museum of Natural History, the Arctic Studies Center and the National Zoo and Conservation and Biology Institute have worked with communities in Alaska and Washington D.C to create K-12 educational materials and experiences that improve the representation of cultural connections and histories. Read more here: https://s.si.edu/3Z9DU1M #SmithsonianNAHM

Today we're feeling thankful for botanical illustrations. The main goal in botanical illustration is to create a record for scientists to refer back to in the future, but the artistry and beauty of these images cannot go unappreciated. This illustration of the common onion (Allium cepa) was done in 1972 by Diane Robertson.

Whether you prefer canned or fresh, cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) will probably make an appearance on your dinner table later this week. Found throughout central and eastern Canada and the northeastern and north-central United States, cranberries were first cultivated in the 1810s. A small, creeping shrub, they are often grown in wetland soils and harvested by temporarily flooding fields, shaking berries loose, and gathering the floating berries. The cranberries seen here were collected in Washington D.C. in 2015. The shipping crate from Smithsonian National Museum of American History's collection contained Mist-Kist brand cranberries that were grown and packed by the Grayland Cranberry Growers Association Inc. of Grayland, Washington during the first half of the 20th century.

Today we mourn the loss of our friend and colleague Dave Johnson, Curator of Fishes. Dave was a world-renowned comparative morphologist and ichthyologist who joined our Fish Division's curatorial staff in 1983.  He was by nature a collaborator and had many co-authors worldwide.  Dave’s extraordinary scholarly contributions were celebrated by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in 2003 when he received the Society’s Robert H. Gibbs, Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence in Systematic Ichthyology. Dave also served the museum in numerous ways including as Chair of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology.  He was a man of strong opinions which sometimes masked an even larger heart. He was committed to this place, his field, and its future. He served as a mentor to staff – long-time and new, young and old – and took particular interest in ensuring that future generations had the support they needed to be successful. This included recently partnering with his friend and colleague Bruce Collette to endow a permanent curatorial position in the Fish Division. We’re going to miss Dave a lot.

A case of mistaken squirrel identity has been solved thanks to two of our researchers. Research zoologist Arlo Hinckley, curator Melissa Hawkins, and colleagues recently re-evaluated two squirrel species in a paper published last month in the journal Vertebrate Zoology. Read more here: https://s.si.edu/4fzaCR4