Field Museum

Ancient burial practices and DNA research reveal that family goes beyond genetic relatedness

You probably have a member of your family that you’re not related to by blood—a step-parent, an adopted cousin, your mom’s ...
Field Museum

Gone, but not forgotten: How an extinct dog breed still lives on through memory and tradition in Coast Salish communities

On April 3, the Field Museum debuted Woolly Dogs, a temporary exhibition within Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories, ...
The Field Museum

This ancient plant-eater had a twisted jaw and sideways-facing teeth

In a dry riverbed in Brazil, in a dense forest near the Amazon, a team of paleontologists found a fossilized jawbone from an ancient animal. Over the course of their fieldwork, they found eight ...
The Field Museum

The Körös Regional Archaeological Project

The Körös Regional Archaeological Project (KRAP) is a multidisciplinary, collaborative, research project directed by William A. Parkinson of the Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum, and ...
The Field Museum

Football-sized fossil creature may have been one of the first land animals to eat its veggies

Life on Earth started in the oceans. Sometime around 475 million years ago, plants began making their way from the water onto the land, and it took another 100 million years for the first animals with ...
The Field Museum

The earliest known bird had complex tongue bones and fleshy “teeth” on the roof of its mouth—which might have helped it snag the food it needed for flight

Flying is really hard work. Compared to walking, swimming, or running, flying is the form of movement that takes the most energy and requires the most calories. That means that birds have had to ...
The Field Museum

This fossil bird choked to death on rocks, and no one knows why

A fossil only tells part of the story. When an animal’s body is preserved as a fossil, there are often pieces missing, and even a perfectly-preserved body doesn’t tell the whole story of how that ...
The Field Museum

Solving mysteries with moss

Tiny plants, like moss, are easy to overlook. They're often as small as an eyelash, and they tend to grow on the ground in dark, wet places. But these small plants sometimes turn out to be big clues ...
The Field Museum

Who was Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable?

Renaming Chicago's iconic Lake Shore Drive has renewed interest in the multicultural legacy of the city's first non-Native settler. Before the Chicago City Council voted to rename Lake Shore Drive in ...
The Field Museum

Which Dinosaur Bones Are “Real”?

SUE the T. rex is an incredibly complete fossil, and Máximo the Titanosaur is a cast. Here’s why we have both. “Is that real?” This is a question we often hear from visitors as they roam the Field ...
The Field Museum

Beachgoer's Guide to Lake Michigan Fossils and Rocks

See how many of these rocks and fossils you've spotted on the shore. Take a look at some of the more common rocks and fossils that can be spotted around the lake (particularly on the Michigan side).