These images from the Smithsonian Institution depict Nancy Knowlton's work with snapping shrimp in Panama. Knowlton found that the closing of the isthmus -- dividing the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean -- resulted in new species of shrimp.

This video segment adapted from NOVA features a variety of scientific perspectives on the age old question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Animations make vivid the improbability that we could intercept a radio wave signaling extra terrestrial intelligence.

This video segment describes how the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy could have been fossilized. Footage courtesy of NOVA: "In Search of Human Origins."

Visualize how comets carrying chemicals necessary for life could have made their way to Earth billions of years ago in this video segment adapted from NOVA.

Amino acids, essential ingredients for life, may have been delivered to Earth by comets billions of years ago, as visualized in this video segment adapted from NOVA.

In this video segment, ZOOM guest Cassie takes us on a tour of the coral reef near her home in Key Largo, Florida, and points out some of its unique features.

The AMNH Darwin Manuscripts Project is a historical and textual edition of Charles Darwin's scientific manuscripts, designed from its inception as an online project. The database at its core‰ŰÓDARBASE‰ŰÓcatalogues some 45,000 Darwin scientific manuscripts. These are currently represented by 15,125 high resolution digital images. Thus far 7,428 manuscript pages have been transcribed to exacting standards and all are presented in easy to read format. New material will be added.

Oyster Shells is one of the AMNH Education Department's many collections of specimens and artifacts gathered the world over by explorers and scientists. In its online Discovery Collection form, Oyster Shells includes photographs of 15 specimens with classification and distribution details, an interactive key that guides you through specimen identification, an activity where students select and identify a specimen photograph using the interactive identification key and an Educator's Guide with suggestions for how to use the Oyster Shells Discovery Collection in the classroom.

In this activity, students play the roles of "time travel agents" creating an advertisement for a geologic time period which has been assigned to them. They will use the Earth Science Reference Tables (available on the internet) to learn some basic facts about their assigned period. A rubric for assessing student understanding is provided.

In this online activity, learners discover how random variation influences biological evolution. Biological evolution is often thought of as a process by which adaptation is generated through selection.Œć While it is recognized that random variation underlies the process, emphasis is usually placed on selection and resulting adaptation, leaving a sense that it is selection that drives evolution.Œć This simulation highlights the creative role of random variation, offering a somewhat different perspective: that of evolution as open-ended exploration driven by randomness and constrained by selection, with adaptation as a dynamic, transient consequence rather than an objective.

This Evolution video segment depicts the landmark hominid fossil finds by Don Johanson and his team in Ethiopia.

In this video segment from Evolution: "Great Transformations," paleontologist Jenny Clack explains that vertebrates evolved fingers before they invaded land.

The shared set of genes for body segments, possessed by all animals, are discussed in this video segment from Evolution: "Great Transformations."

Students trace the migration route of a gray whale and discover the gray whale’s natural history.

This course offers an introduction to the history and historiography of science from ancient Greece to the present. It is designed to serve as an introduction for those who have no prior background in the field and to deepen the knowledge of those who already do. We will consider how the history of science has responded to its encounters with philosophy, sociology, economics, and anthropology. Our readings and discussions will focus on determining what makes particular works effective, understanding major contemporary trends and debates in the history of science, and establishing resources for further research.

In this lesson, students investigate the life history characteristics of different Antarctic penguin species and identify the changes that their populations have experienced.

This site assembles the information from the April 1997 American Museum of Natural History symposium on the role humans have played, and continue to play, in the extinction of species. It presents an overview of extinction, the various hypotheses that explain this irreplaceable loss, details about what happened 14,000 years ago and the ongoing role humans play in the extinction process, a bestiary with notes and illustrations about some of the mammals that have gone extinct from the Pleistocene era through the 20th century, and what can be done to prevent another extinction event.

Imagine being transported into an entirely new world, or see the world you know being transformed in fantastical ways: that is what immersive experiences can deliver. Traditional classroom learning can be restrictive and at times dull, but virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) can offer transformative learning experiences that are novel, interactive, and exciting. There is nothing quite like the immersive experience that this media and these technologies offer. It these experiences and this technology pertaining to education and natural and cultural history that we explore in this open course.

This video segment adapted from NOVA illustrates why carbon is at the center of life on Earth. It also asks whether carbon-based life might exist on other planets.