SBnature Blog | Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

July 12

1:32 PM /

Las Cumbres Observatory Aids Discovery of Interstellar Comet

By Sandy Seale

A newly discovered speedy visitor from another solar system far, far, away in our galaxy has been confirmed, thanks to the rapid response telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO). LCO is a nonprofit corporation based in Goleta, California, dedicated to advancing worldwide understanding of the universe through science with its global network of full robotic optical telescopes. The newfound object is named Comet 3I/ATLAS: “ATLAS” after the astronomical survey that discovered it and “3I” because it is the third such interstellar object to be found.

Learn more about this visitor from beyond

March 26

2:59 PM /

2

Not All Novae Are Super: T Coronae Borealis

By Ila Jade Komasa

In the coming months, a very small constellation in the night sky holds the potential for a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event that you can witness yourself. If you’re out stargazing this spring and summer, look for the constellation Corona Borealis, or the Northern Crown. (You’ll find it near Draco and Boötes.) Astronomers predict that sometime soon, an obscure star in this constellation will suddenly go from being invisible to the naked eye to shining as brightly as Polaris!

Uncover the science behind the stars

November 14

1:00 PM /

2

Largo’s Long Career: For the Good of Gopher Snakes

By Tessa Cafritz

Some people look at animals in zoos and aquariums and wonder if they need to be there instead of in their natural environments. I can understand that, and as a science educator at the Sea Center, I talk to people with these inquiries every day. It motivates me to illuminate the important roles that animals in human care at educational and research institutions can play.

Read about Largo the snake and his enrichment

November 06

1:22 PM /

0

Tiny Clams Have Big Personalities

By Owen Duncan

An interview with Curator Emeritus of Malacology Paul Valentich-Scott

OD: Your recently published study introduced the world to a new species of clam from South Africa. How did this collaboration come about in the first place?

PVS: I’m mostly a Pacific guy, but in 2013 I named a new species off of California and British Columbia, Waldo arthuri, which really caught on in the press. Charles Griffiths, a marine biologist in South Africa and emeritus professor at University of Cape Town, saw this. He emailed me a picture of a sea urchin with tiny little clams all over it, saying, “What is this?” I said, “If you send me some, I can tell you.” He sent them to me, and I didn’t even know the genus. But I could tell it was part of this understudied group, the galeommatids (gal-ee-oh-MAT-ids).

Get to know the galeommatids

October 16

5:24 PM /

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Comet A3 Visible in October

By Ila Jade Komasa

Visible for the next couple weeks is Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. What a mouthful! C/ indicates it is a non-periodic comet, 2023 is the year of discovery, A3 stands for the time of year it was discovered—with A denoting the first half of January and 3 meaning it was the third object discovered during that period—and finally, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS credits the two observatories that discovered the object.

When and where to look

June 06

11:27 AM /

2

Curating Thousands of “Moss Animals”: Staff Celebrate a Digital Milestone

By Owen Duncan

An interview with Department of Invertebrate Zoology staff

Owen: Congratulations on digitizing thousands of bryozoans. What are they?

Meet the "moss animals"

November 21

4:24 PM /

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Remembering Sojourner Kinkaid Rolle

By Owen Duncan

Like so many local people, we are mourning the loss of Sojourner Kinkaid Rolle. Here at the Museum, she was a powerful friend of books, poetry, and nature, our memories together stretching back through her many decades in Santa Barbara.

Reflect and read Sojourner's poetry

November 16

5:21 PM /

3

Remembering Adelina Alva-Padilla

By Owen Duncan

As we remember our departed friend and advisor Adelina Alva-Padilla (1936–2023), longtime staff members from the Department of Anthropology shared some of their memories of how her life was interwoven with ours.

Meet our dear friend Adelina

October 06

3:00 PM /

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A Chumash Cultural Burn Reignites Ancient Practice for Wildland Conservation

By Harrison Tasoff

This is a cross-posting from the UCSB Current.

Members of the Chumash community gathered at UC Santa Barbara’s North Campus Open Space for an event that none of them had ever witnessed, a practice that had been lost for generations, that most thought would never happen again. More than two centuries since the last cultural burn in the region, they were returning fire to the land in a manner their ancestors may have recognized.

Learn more about the cultural burn

August 25

9:17 AM /

1

Digitizing the Uncataloged: Making Marine Invertebrates Accessible

By Alexandria Gour

My name is Alexandria Gour, and I’m a curatorial assistant in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum. Since I began working at SBMNH last year, my average day as a curatorial assistant revolves entirely around cataloging and rehousing collection material that falls under the Digitizing Invertebrates (DigIn) grant.

Learn more about digitizing invertebrate records

May 24

1:43 PM /

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Ensuring the Future of Science

By Luke Swetland

May is an exciting month at the Museum and Sea Center. The butterflies have arrived, camp instructors are being trained, and baby birds are making their way from their nests. Inevitability, this time of year is also a bit bittersweet as we bid farewell to our Quasars to Sea Stars teen graduates.

Read about our dedicated teen interns

February 18

4:28 PM /

8

Know Your Gorgonians—Or Else!

By Owen Duncan

“I require my students to learn the names of things,” says Westmont Associate Prof. of Biology Beth Horvath, M.S. “Knowing who you share the planet with is part of your education. The name opens doors. It gives you access to information. That’s why I’m here at the Museum, and why my students get dragged here many times over the course of the year.”

Find out why we're fans of sea fans

December 22

1:27 PM /

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Yuletide Flora: Celebrate the Season with Some Festive Native Plants

By Harrison Tasoff

This is a cross-posting from the UCSB Current.

While it may not be a classic winter wonderland, the South Coast does boast several festive flora for the winter season. Among them are California holly and the region’s two genera of mistletoe—and a bonus mentioned later on.

Learn more about native plants

December 08

3:48 PM /

3

A Teacher’s Forgotten Tusk: Dorothy Cooke’s Pygmy Mammoth

By Stella Scheim

The Pygmy Mammoth (Mammuthus exilis) was a tiny mammoth that roamed the superisland Santarosae (now Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel Islands) during the late Pleistocene until its extinction around 13,000 years ago. Today, two of its skeletons serve as centerpieces to our museum’s Earth Sciences hall: a composite skeleton in a glass display, and a cast of a 1994 excavation in the middle of the room. Both represent important milestones in the history of the species–the former was the first mount of a Pygmy Mammoth, and the latter is the most complete skeleton of its kind ever found. As guests pass through the hall every day, many are unaware, however, that the very history of what we know about this species is intertwined with that of the Museum. The story of SBMNH’s love for Pygmy Mammoths begins with a tusk, an island, and a woman named Dorothy Irma Cooke.

Learn about Dorothy's discovery

November 15

1:21 PM /

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We Need to Build Deep Sea Expertise, Fast. Museums Can Help.

By Owen Duncan

The deep sea is in the news a lot these days, as it becomes more attractive not only to extractors of fossil fuels, but to makers of electric car batteries. The International Seabed Authority is charged by the UN with the task of regulating this mining to protect the environment. It’s a difficult challenge for many reasons, such as that we’re barely beginning to understand the ecosystems mining may affect. Museum collections have a major role to play in building that understanding, both as repositories for samples that document the existence of deep-sea organisms, and as bases for the scientists who study those organisms.

Meet a researcher using our deep sea collections

October 13

3:30 PM /

10

Fungal Fruitings of Santa Barbara

By Stella Scheim

My name is Stella Scheim, and I’m a senior in the Quasars to Sea Stars program, a three- to four-year internship program here at the Museum that allows high schoolers to explore science and nature through hands-on learning. Each summer, Quasars create a project that they present in August; first years collaborate on creating an original museum as they learn about the inner workings of our own, and second and third years present a literature review of a topic of their choice that relates to summer classes taught by our Teen Programs intern. Seniors, though, are tasked with something with a bit of larger scope: an original research project, mentored by an expert in the field, that they work on throughout the year.

For my project, I focused on a long term passion of mine–fungi.

Discover S.B.'s fungal fruitings with Stella

August 27

1:14 PM /

1

Museum Collection Takes Wing

By Luke Swetland

How do you build a collection? Slowly, and with patience. The Museum’s research collections are built in many ways, and usually over many years. They start small and grow through the collecting efforts and encouragement by generations of curators, donations from private collectors, from other museums, and the public who bring in something interesting or important. If well cared for and made accessible, they can become significant to our understanding of the natural world we live in.

The Museum’s current Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) collection started with a few cabinets salvaged from a fire in 1962. Sandy Russell volunteered as a docent in 1999 when she and her husband Paul moved to Santa Barbara. Eric Hochberg, Ph.D., a curator in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at that time, suggested that she also come work on the long-neglected insect collection. She has been tending the collection and adding specimens ever since. The addition of the Schlinger Chair of Entomology in 2001 has been a game-changer since it signaled a long-term commitment to insects by the Museum. Since that time the collection has grown manyfold through donations from Tom Dimock, Ken Denton, Ed Pfeiler, and others. John Carson donated specimens and a significant bequest.

July 14

1:11 PM /

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27 Years, 65 Exhibits: Piece of Cake!

By Luke Swetland

The last couple years have flown by so quickly that we’ve overlooked milestones worth marking. In 2020, the John & Peggy Maximus Wing passed its 25-year anniversary, an event which—had it been safe to gather then—we certainly would have celebrated with a reception and a giant cake topped with an Audubon in icing. Two years later, Maximus Curator Linda Miller is pausing to reflect on this quarter-century accomplishment. Consider this letter your virtual piece of cake: just as sweet, and not at all fattening.

June 16

9:37 AM /

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The Art of Collecting

By Luke Swetland

For many of us, the compulsion to collect starts in childhood as a form of play. But things can get serious fast. My father-in-law David Byers remembers: “As a kid, I used to come home with my pockets full of rocks.” By the time he was 20, he had started collecting for real, informed by an undergraduate education in geology. He didn’t stop until 1,200 specimens later, a number he assures me isn’t actually that large by private mineral collection standards!

We asked David about motivating criteria. “Perfection” was paramount; he wanted undamaged and uncut natural crystals. He became a regular at the world’s largest and most prestigious gem and mineral show: during 45 years, he missed the mineral-lover’s annual pilgrimage to Tucson only three times.

May 12

11:51 AM /

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Fool's Gold? Not To Us

By Luke Swetland

I want to tell you about some “fool’s gold” that’s worth much more to us than “real” gold.

One of the goals of our upcoming summer show, Rare Earth, is to make you think about the value humans assign to natural objects. The earth science treasures in this show have meant different things to different people over millennia. Because we facilitate research and provide education, scientific value is a priority for us. We’re interested in what we can learn from natural objects, and an object’s capacity to teach is usually not the same as its market value.