By Jake Richardson •
July 16, 2009
A new species of Samoan fruit bat or ‘flying fox’ was discovered at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia by Kristofer M. Helgen, a Research Zoologist and Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Helgen, the lead author of the paper published in American Museum Novitates, noticed the bat within one hour of being on the premises of the Academy of Sciences. (There are about 17 million biological specimens housed at the Academy.)
By Levi Novey •
July 13, 2009
The U.S. National Park Service has partnered with the American Museum of Natural History to cryogenically freeze tissues from endangered species that live within U.S. national parks– eventually the new research collection will contain an estimated 1 million samples.
The effort will facilitate research that could help protect these endangered species from going extinct– or at least leave a record of their genetic makeup behind. The first specimens to enter the collection will be blood samples from California’s endangered Channel Island fox. They will be followed by genetic material from the American crocodile and the Hawaiian goose.
