From the Field

Monthly Archive: December From

Cloth hunting in Tanzania

Posted: June 13, 2013 - 10:48 , by ROM
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In the 19th century, cloth was big business in East Africa. From present-day Somalia down to Mozambique, the whole eastern half of the continent was experiencing an economic boom as it exported elephant ivory, slaves, aromatics and spices to Asia, Europe, and North America. With their newfound wealth, East African consumers largely sought to acquire foreign cloth and beads.

Ontario Road Ecology Group - Protecting biodiversity from the threat of roads

Posted: June 6, 2013 - 09:46 , by royal
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Ontario Road Ecology Group Logo

Authored by Mandy Karch.

The Ontario Road Ecology Group (OREG) has been working to protect biodiversity from the threats of roads through research, policy and stewardship initiatives with our partners.  The Heart Lake Road in Brampton cuts through protected wetland complexes, and OREG has been there to help.

Into the Heart of Borneo - A Month on Mulu Mountain & LIVE Google Hangout

Posted: May 24, 2013 - 12:16 , by royal
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Entomologist Chris Darling looks at the mountain during sunset.

ROM Biodiversity researchers studying insects, fungi, and mammals have been discovering new species in the heart of Borneo, in Gunung Mulu National Park, throughout the month of May....

Into the Heart of Borneo - Gunung Mulu National Park

Posted: May 6, 2013 - 12:40 , by royal
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The ROM Biodiversity "Borneo" team has landed in Sarawak, and have been spending the last several days organizing equipement, permits and buying machetes....

Magpies, Hand axe, and Highway - Dr. Chen Shen and the ROM-China Luonan Project

Posted: May 3, 2013 - 14:39 , by ROM
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Dr. Chen Shen

In China the colourful and beautiful sounds of the Eurasian Magpies (Figure 1) historically have been described in many poems and throughout literature...

My journey with Sir David Attenborough

Posted: January 21, 2013 - 10:00 , by ROM
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Sir David Attenborough with Jean-Bernard Caron at the Walcott Quarry (Burgess Shale)

Sir David Attenborough has been filming Nature all his life. In 2009, at the age of 83, he traveled the world again to discover how Life began and diversified into the myriad of organisms that form the basis of today's biodiversity. The result of this journey is the beautiful documentary, "First Life," that won three Emmy Awards in 2011. The new ROM Gallery of Early Life anticipated to open by the end of 2014 will feature some of the key fossils shown in the documentary, many of those will come from our own ROM collections! 

The origin of animals represents a turning point in Life history. About half a billion years ago all the major animal groups that are still around us today appear in the fossil record. One of the best sites in the world to study this key interval in Life history is the 505 million year old Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. As an expert of the Burgess Shale biota, I was invited to accompany Sir David Attenborough to the field. Here are few snapshots from the Burgess Shale I took during this specific trip.

Adventures at Big Fish River

Posted: December 10, 2012 - 15:38 , by Mia Ijacic
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This blog post was written by Dr. Kim Tait, Curator of Mineralogy at the ROM. As the new recipient of the YPC Research Fund, Kim has travelled to the northeastern corner of the Yukon—a remote region rich with minerals called Rapid Creek. Her work builds on the legacy of ROM research on phosphate minerals, which are one of the largest and most complex in the mineral kingdom and act as the atomic building blocks of our natural world.

ROM Mycologists in the field

Posted: September 24, 2012 - 13:20 , by royal
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Posting by Kirstin Bourne

Mushroom season has only just started and already ROM mycologists have been out in the field conducting research and searching for new specimens to add to the museum collection. Last week I got the chance to join Jean-Marc Moncalvo, the ROM’s Senior Curator of Mycology, along with Ph.D. Candidate Santiago Sanchez and Josie Carding, a summer intern in the Schad Gallery of Biodiversity for a few days of foraging and camping in Ontario’s Awenda Provincial Park.

Pronghorns and Prickly Pears and Bison…oh my! Thoughts on Grasslands National Park

Posted: September 11, 2012 - 17:48 , by Nicole Richards

Submitted by Alexander Muth, winner of the Find the Baby Bison Contest

Alexander loving the view from the top of 70 mile Butte

We’re back.  We all had a great trip out west. It’s hard to pick out highlights, as it all seems like highlights to me.

Facebook Features A Fishy Story!

Posted: September 11, 2012 - 10:30 , by ROM
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When ROM Ichthyologist Dr. Hernan Lopez-Fernandez was unable to attend a 2011 expedition to the Cuyuni River in Guyana, he found other creative ways to collaborate with fellow scientists. Dr. Lopez-Fernandez enabled Devin Bloom, a U of T graduate student with extensive experience in Guyana through previous joint expeditions, to attend in his place and share the specimen collections and tissue samples with the ROM.