FEATURED STORIES
Mental Mirrors
Special cells in the brain mimic the actions and intentions of others,
form the basis of empathy and social connections.
By Marco Iacoboni
The Search for
the Biggest Fish
Unraveling the mysteries—science is seeking to improve human under- standing of the whale shark.
By Steven G. Wilson
Dark Matter
Most of the matter of the universe is neither bound up in stars or planets nor dispersed in “ordinary” particles. What is it made of?
By Donald Goldsmith
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Wherever the Wind
May Blow
Electronic trackers and sensors now show ornithologists
where albatrosses and frigatebirds go.
By Henri Weimerskirch
The Elephant in Captivity
As the elephant walks, it lowers its pillar-like legs deliberately as though conscious of the crushing force of their weight.
By W. Henry Sheak
An Octopus Trilogy
The gigantic mass of tissue that washed up on the beach at St. Augustine in 1896 was the remains of an octopus that must have measured 200 feet.
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“The Horse,” a special exhibition at The American Museum of Natural History, premieres May 17 and remains on view until January 4, 2009. It covers 50 million years of the animal's evolution and shows how the horse transformed human art, culture, and civilization. The exhibition is curated by Ross MacPhee, a mammalogist at the American Museum, and Sandra Olsen, a zooarchaeologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh (Olsen has also contributed a related article, “Hoofprints,” to the May issue of Natural History). For information on the exhibition, visit the American Museum’s exhibition page, The Horse.
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CURRENT ISSUE:
May 2008
Cover: Wild horses in
Brecon Beacons National
Park, Wales
Photo: David Norton
Go to Table of Contents
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 “Big Cat Fight”— Can private ownership of
tigers help save a species? Read more at: |
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PARTNER HIGHLIGHT
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Scientists uncovered 25 species of birds. |
Fossils from Bahamian Blue Hole May Give Clues to Early Life
The first entire fossilized skeletons of a tortoise and a crocodile found in the West Indies were discovered in Sawmill Sink on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, along with bones of a lizard, snakes, bats, and 25 species of birds, as well as abundant plant fossils. They were retrieved by skilled scuba divers from the sinkhole, which contains salt water covered by a layer of freshwater.
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Skull of the land-roaming Cuban crocodile | | |
David Steadman, a paleo-ornithologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and several colleagues analyzed the fossils, which date between 1,000 and 4,200 years old. One conclusion: the arrival of prehistoric humans quickly altered life on what had been an isolated island.
MUSEUM PARTNERS
Members of any of Natural History’s Museum Partners receive the magazine as a benefit of membership. Read Highlights from Natural History's museum
partners:
Maya Politics Likely Played Role in Ancient Large-Game Decline, provided by the Florida Museum of Natural History
Pompeii, provided by the San Diego Natural History Museum
Academy Science at the Top of the World, provided by the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
Citizen Science, provided by the San Diego Natural History Museum
Lizards and Snakes: Alive!, provided by the Houston Museum of Natural Science
Evolution’s Non Debate, provided by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Science on Top of the World, provided by The Saint Louis Science Center
Racing to Survey Coral Reefs, provided by the Florida Museum of Natural History
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Photo: Mariko Takahashi |
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SAMPLINGS
Shivering Flirts—It’s not the spots on a peacock's tail that attracts pea- hens, it's the way he shakes his booty—a display called shivering.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! —Pirates were a bloodthirsty, rapacious, democratic lot.
Eye-Spotting—The “eyes” on butterfly wings aren't what scares off attackers—any conspicuous mark will do.
Masters of Disguise or Display?—Chameleons change color to win mates, not to hide from predators.
Preflight Packaging—Sophisticated X-rays reveal primitive feathers trapped in amber.
Rainy Workdays—Does traffic cause midweek showers?
Building Their Own Beds—Nest-building salmon engineer the flow of streams.
Scraping Bottom for Blue—The Maya made a mysterious blue pigment at the hour of sacrifice.
The Warming Earth
Sulfur Spritzer—Nix another idea for halting climate change.
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 BOOKSHELF
By Laurence A. Marschall
Just after the Big Bang—the laws of microphysics tell us—every particle had a mirror twin, opposite in charge but equal in mass. For each electron there was an antielectron, for each quark an antiquark, and for every neutrino an antineutrino. And presumably it should have stayed that way. Particles and antiparticles are created in pairs and destroyed in pairs; when an electron and an antielectron collide, for example, both vanish in a flash of light. Even as the universe expands, the balance sheet for matter and antimatter shouldn't change.
Yet the balance today is skewed toward matter—in fact, there is almost no antimatter in our known universe—so it must have shifted sometime. How that happened is not yet clearly understood. In The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter, Helen R. Quinn and Yossi Nir, both eminent particle physicists, take on the daunting task of explaining the ongoing work cosmologists, who now realize that they must study the smallest bits of the cosmos to understand its large-scale formation.
Laurence A. Marschall examines their work and also reviews books on ice-age sediments along the equator and on the legacy of the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.
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