Research

Monthly Archive: December rese

Triceratops Dig Week 1

Posted: June 23, 2014 - 10:26 , by royal
Categories: 
Dinosaurs, Palaeontology, From the Field, Research
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Land with water on it

For the past week, a small crew from the Royal Ontario Museum’s palaeontology division has been excavating a Triceratops site on private ranchland in Harding County, South Dakota.

The Monastery of St Moses, Syria: Introduction

Posted: June 17, 2014 - 15:32 , by Robert Mason
Categories: 
World Culture, Archaeology, From the Field, Research
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View of the old monastery buildings from the South in 2004, with then Brother Jihad, a member of the monastery.

Robert Mason reports on his years of archaeological fieldwork at the Monastery of St Moses, Syria, in this blog series. 

 

 

A Fish With a Big Bang

Posted: June 11, 2014 - 13:00 , by ROM
Categories: 
Burgess Shale, Research
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Illustration of Metaspriggina

New fossils reveal first hints of the evolution of jaws in primitive fish.

Ontario BioBlitz Brings Bad News for Arachnophobes

Posted: June 9, 2014 - 03:03 , by ROM
Categories: 
Natural History, Nature, Biodiversity, Research
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a young boy carefully lets a spider crawl across his palms

Guest Blogger and 2014 Ontario Bioblitz Arachnid Taxon team leader Dr. Gergin Blagoev, Research Associate at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO), tells us about finding double the expected number of spider species in the Humber River Watershed and shares a couple of the most interesting species that were found.

Sharing of Museum Biodiversity Data on the Web

Posted: June 5, 2014 - 11:50 , by royal
Categories: 
Collections, Natural History, Research, Technology
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Map of the world.

Learn about where you can find open source data from our biodiversity collections

2014 Ontario Bioblitz Bird Count Gets Results!

Posted: June 2, 2014 - 11:04 , by ROM
Categories: 
Natural History, Nature, Biodiversity, Research
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A small blue and white bird sits on a post against background of vegetation.

Guest blogger and 2014 Ontario Bioblitz Bird Taxon team leader Kevin Kerr, Curator of Birds at Toronto Zoo, writes on some of his experiences inventorying birds, including 9 species-at-risk, from the Humber River Watershed.

Moonbird re-sighting

Posted: May 30, 2014 - 09:13 , by royal
Categories: 
From the Field, What's New, Ornithology, Research
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The orange flag on this Red Knot's leg indicates it was banded in Argentina.

Back in 1995 ROM ornithologist Dr. Allan Baker was part of an international team that banded a small shorebird in Argentina, a Red-knot soon to become dubbed Moonbird, with a leg band with the number B95 on it.

Snapshots of Biodiversity: A Photo Essay on the 2014 Ontario BioBlitz

Posted: May 26, 2014 - 15:41 , by ROM
Categories: 
Nature, Natural History, Biodiversity, Research
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A scientist and a youth look closely at a specimen on a table next to a microscope.

The 2014 Ontario BioBlitz brought 500+ registrants together this past weekend to find and catalogue biodiversity in the Humber River watershed, and students from the Environmental Visual Communication (EVC) Program were there to capture the event from every angle.

Study explores evolution of flightless birds

Posted: May 16, 2014 - 11:58 , by royal
Categories: 
Nature, Biodiversity, Natural History, Ornithology, Research
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Tinamous
Allan Baker and colleagues from Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research used genetic techniques to show that tinamous, small flying birds from Central and South America, evolved within the ratites group.

DNA confirms relationship between the giant flightless moa and the tinamous

Posted: May 13, 2014 - 12:46 , by royal
Categories: 
Biodiversity, Ornithology, Research
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One of the longest running debates in ornithology may finally  have an answer thanks to new ROM research published in science journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.