The beauty of coral reefs captivates both tourists and scientists across the globe, including myself! However, I for one have only seen live corals in the fish tanks in my dentist's office. The corals that you or I would expect to see off the coast of Australia are shallow-water corals that are relatively easy to locate and study. It’s a lot harder to study deep-sea corals. It requires a great deal of time and money to reach deep-sea coral habitats. In fact, sometimes scientists spend a lot of time and money looking but wind up not finding any. Acadian Redfish. Image courtesy of the NOAA Offi ..read more

Hi! My name is Alex Makogon. Welcome to a part of the internet where you get to read about the incredible discoveries on our planet. For the next couple of months, I will be an intern with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to bring you “no-spine” chilling stories here on the No Bones Blog! With COVID-19 affecting everyone’s lives in so many different ways, I am truly honored to be able to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Allen Collins and the other specialists at the Smithsonian. This is an incredible opportunity, and I hope you enjoy what I have in store to share with al ..read more

Hi! My name is Jenny and I’m a new intern working with Dr. Allen Collins and Dr. Karen Osborn! I’ll be making art pieces based on new research and cool things in the invertebrate zoology department here at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I am an incoming freshman at Stanford who is interested in the intersection between biology, art, and creative writing. I am so excited to learn from all the amazing scientists here as well as the new and exciting research happening here.   “Rhizobia” is an installation combining a painting with suspended petri dishes of a root n ..read more

Andrea Quattrini in the ROV control room during an Okeanos Explorer Expedition. The Department of Invertebrate Zoology continues to bolster their reputation with the arrival of impressive, young researchers. The latest expert to board this ship of scientists is the new curator of anthozoans, Andrea Quattrini.  Going Boneless Quattrini’s career began surrounded by farms and creeks as she attended Millersville University in her home state of Pennsylvania. The modest school boasts a strong marine biology program, which granted Quattrini her bachelor’s and seeded her marine aspirations. From ther ..read more

John Pfeiffer holding freshwater mussel, Chamberlainia hainesiana, in western Thailand in 2017 underneath a trestle of the Death Railway near Kra Sae Cave. John Pfeiffer first forayed into natural history collections work during his undergrad at Northern Michigan University. At the time, he was unaware that his professional journey would lead to a position as the new Curator of Bivalves at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Pfeiffer’s beginnings As an ambitious undergraduate at a small university nestled on the south shore of Lake Superior, Pfeiffer developed his fascinati ..read more

I have been trying to write this post for a while, but every time I start to think about what to write about my work on deep sea sponges, I get stuck on where to begin. So, this idea stayed in the back of my mind and, suddenly, in the last couple of months, I met different people from different places who, when they realized what I was working on, asked me two things: “Why sponges?” and “Why the deep sea?” Most people probably think of sponges (often confused with corals by lay people) as animals that just live on the bottom of the sea filtering water. Such a boring group of animals doesn`t re ..read more

Those who have studied the Smithsonian are no doubt familiar with the U.S. Navy’s U.S. Exploring Expedition, called the Ex. Ex. for short.  This ambitious trip around the world took four-years (1838-1842), included six ships, and the crew had a team of nine scientists and artists.  It is one of the largest in the history of scientific discovery and thousands of articles (from ethnographic artifacts to biological specimens) were collected. These objects became the foundation of the Smithsonian’s collections.  Right around this time, in Great Britain, Anna Atkins was experimenting with a new pho ..read more

Surely you have heard of the famous US National Museum female carcinologist, Mary Jane Rathbun, but there are a number of other female carcinologists who worked or were associated with the Museum that also deserve the stage light, most notably Harriet Richardson Searle, Mildred Stratton Wilson, and Isabel Canet Pérez Farfante. Fig. 1. Mary Jane Rathbun Harriet Richardson Searle Harriet Richardson Searle was known as the First Lady of Isopods, and one of the earliest woman carcinologists (Mary Jane Rathbun preceded her by only 5 years!).  With a career spanning more than 20 years and 80 publi ..read more