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Interior: Zebra with Two Chairs and Funky Fur, Mickalene Thomas, 2012

These Colorful Contemporary Artworks Join the Hirshhorn Museum’s Collection as the D.C. Landmark Continues to Celebrate Its 50th Anniversary

The museum is also preparing to reopen its redesigned sculpture garden, featuring new works from eight artists, this fall

Andrena regularis, or the regular mining bee, is an important pollinator species.

Scientists Found 5.6 Million Burrowing Bees Beneath a Cemetery in New York. The Group Is One of the Largest on Record

Researchers in Ithaca estimated the number of ground-nesting bees emerging from a local cemetery in spring 2023, revealing just how abundant some understudied pollinators are

Entomologist Mark Moffett photographed cone ants climbing onto and cleaning harvester ants.

These Tiny Ants Crawled All Over Larger Ants and Licked Them Clean. Scientists Aren’t Sure How This Behavior Benefits Any of Them

After witnessing the interactions in an Arizona desert, a Smithsonian researcher suggests that the little ants picked off tasty treats and that the big ants got thoroughly groomed in hard-to-reach places

Elephant calf Linh Mai stomps in a shallow pool in the Elephant Community Center at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute on February 25.

See the Most Adorable Photos of Baby Elephant Linh Mai, the National Zoo’s Newest Star

Since her birth in early February, the calf has been growing and beginning to bond with her care team and herd. She will go on view in-person and online starting April 22

One of blue crabs' biggest threats seems to be members of their own species.

Cannibalistic Blue Crabs Are Eating Their Younger Peers in Part of the Chesapeake Bay

The findings by Smithsonian researchers could help experts better manage this crustacean’s population. The creatures play important roles in the local ecosystem and food industry

Scientists found that fringe-lipped bats have a roughly 50 percent success rate when trying to capture prey.

These Lazy Bats Are Super-Efficient Killers That Carefully Conserve Energy to Attack at a Moment’s Notice

Wild fringe-lipped bats spend just one-tenth of the night in flight, but they can precisely snatch a calling frog and nab prey that rivals their own size

New life may have evolved surprisingly fast after a famous mass extinction event about 66 million years ago.

After the Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Wrecked the Planet, Life May Have Bounced Back Surprisingly Fast

The steady rate of falling space dust helped researchers recalibrate the timeline

The JADES-ID1 protocluster

Astronomers Spot a Huge Cluster of Galaxies Forming Earlier in Cosmic History Than Thought Possible

The young galaxy cluster existed about 12.8 billion years ago and has an estimated mass 20 trillion times that of the sun

The female calf was born on February 2 at 1:15 A.M. Eastern Standard Time.

An Asian Elephant Was Born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo for the First Time in Almost 25 Years. Now, You Can Help Pick Her Name

The calf was born to 12-year-old Nhi Linh, a first-time mother, and 44-year-old Spike. The pair bred as part of a program working to conserve the endangered species

Paleontologists removed roughly 3,000 pounds of rocks and fossils from the site between mid-September and mid-October 2025.

Dinosaur National Monument Construction Work Turns Up New Fossils, Leading to the First Excavation at One Site in More Than a Century

Recent digs revealed roughly 20 feet of a long-necked dinosaur’s skeleton, and paleontologists suspect even more bones are lurking underground

Shenzhou-15 spacecraft debris streaked across the sky above California in April 2024. 

Sonic Booms and Earthquake Sensors Can Help Researchers Track Space Junk as It Plummets to Earth

Falling debris can travel at about 30 times the speed of sound, creating sonic booms that shake the ground

Naked mole-rats are unusual for their long lives and resistance to cancer. Now, researchers suggest the rodents not only tolerate but prefer to be in low-oxygen air.

Naked Mole-Rats Prefer Low-Oxygen Air That Would Kill Most Mammals, Adding to Their List of Death-Defying Superpowers

These underground rodents are the first mammals found to actively choose air with lower-than-normal oxygen levels. Their remarkable ability to survive these conditions could offer a key model for researchers studying new treatments for stroke or lung diseases in humans

The two cubs in their indoor den 

Meet the National Zoo’s Adorable 1-Month-Old Sloth Bear Cubs—the First Born There in More Than a Decade

The cubs will spend the next few months with their mother before debuting to the public

An illustration of ancient sea cows

A Trove of Sea Cow Fossils in Qatar Reveals a New Species That Munched on Seagrass 21 Million Years Ago

The findings suggest that sea cows have been engineering ecosystems in the Persian Gulf for tens of millions of years

Both the Czechoslovakian wolfdog and the chihuahua have some recent wolf DNA, a new study suggests.

A DNA Analysis of Almost 3,000 Canines Suggests That Most Dogs Have a Little Wolf in Them

The two subspecies split about 20,000 years ago. But since then, they may have interbred more often than Smithsonian scientists thought

The Hayli Gubbi volcano in the rural northeast of Ethiopia erupted November 23.

Ethiopian Volcano Erupts for the First Time in Nearly 12,000 Years of Scientific Records

The plume from the Hayli Gubbi volcano drifted east over the Arabian Sea and extended roughly 2,200 miles

Jane Goodall visiting a chimpanzee rescue center in 2018 in Entebbe, Uganda

Jane Goodall, Legendary Primatologist and Anthropologist, Dies at 91

She was considered the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees and was renowned for her global conservation efforts

Yunxian 1 (left) and Yunxian 2 (right) are skulls unearthed in China that had been badly crushed. Scientists digitally reconstructed Yunxian 2 (center) and analyzed its relationship to other early human fossils.

Scientists Reconstruct a Million-Year-Old Skull and Suggest It Could Rewrite Our Timeline of Human Evolution

A recent study dramatically pushes back the date for the emergence of our species, though some researchers call for further evidence

The images, captured with the Event Horizon Telescope, show the magnetic field of the supermassive black hole M87* completely reversing.

Astronomers Watched a Black Hole Unexpectedly Flip Its Magnetic Field, Challenging Theoretical Models

A series of observations between 2017 and 2021 suggest the supermassive structure’s magnetized plasma is more dynamic than thought

The Nyayanga excavation site in Kenya, in July 2025. Fossils and Oldowan tools have been excavated from the tan and reddish-brown sediments, which date to more than 2.6 million years old.

Early Humans Moved Stones Long Distances to Make Tools 600,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

A new study takes another look at some of the oldest known stone tools and suggests their makers transported materials for up to eight miles

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