Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

“Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon to have belongings like this painting go untouched for so many years... Unrolling this Phad and researching it at length is part of my larger effort to more accurately catalog and detail belongings in the South Asia collection.” - Kirin Yadav, Student Researcher.

Wait wait wait hear us out. Did you know some species like giant house spiders have actually been adapting to life indoors for thousands of years? They're as uncomfortable living outside as we are, if not more!

In the early 1980’s, we began preparing separate spread wings to help illustrate features of birds that had never been accurately drawn.

Today our collection of spread wings is the largest in the world, preserving more than 40,000 specimens.

Toy dinosaur holds a pride flag in its mouth

Happy Pride Month! We’re grateful for the strong community of queer folks working at the Burke and we welcome visitors of all genders and sexual identities to this space. This month we have new window displays celebrating queerness in nature and in human culture.

We have a new relationship to celebrate. We've migrated our paleo collections data to Arctos, a 501(c)(3) non-profit community led database system. Now people everywhere can search our data more easily than ever before.

arctos.database.museum/home.cfm

A photo of two large fossilized, articulated skeletons, one of an enormous prehistoric elephant with large tusks shying away from the other, a large leaping cat with long canine teeth.

A photo of the entrance into a gallery with white temporary walls covered in framed colorful art of birds, butterflies and other animals. there is also a mural of birds in yellow and black on one wall facing the viewer.

A photo of a woven Chilkat blanket in yellow, black, and white, showing an array of Northwest coast indigenous art motifs, hanging in a glass display case.

My first trip to the @burkemuseum.bsky.social but not my last! #fossils #paleontology #birds #ArtExhibit #ChilkatWeaving #IndigenousArt

Snails and their shells: Capstone research in the Burke Museum’s shell collection Walk along any beach, and you’re likely to find snail shells dotting the sand. In the Bering Sea, more than 200 species of sea snails exist. They’re an important source of prey for fish and walruses, ...

🌊🐌🐚What do you call a snail that sails the seven seas? A snailor.

Now we've got your attention, check out our new undergrad research story - Jasper's working with a 50-year-old shell dataset to look at Bering Sea community structure, at the @burkemuseum.bsky.social.

👉 fish.uw.edu/2025/02/snai...

@gondwannabe.bsky.social and I had a blast working with students from Loyola and the Idaho Museum of Natural History this week on developing our curation system of Lance Creek micro vertebrate fossils. Special thanks to the @burkemuseum.bsky.social for hosting us! #FossilFriday

We’re happy as a clam to see this project completed!

Carex multispiculata from Chile, black background.

Congratulations to our Curator of Plant Biology Dr. Carrie Tribble (@tribblelab.bsky.social) who just published a study on how plants rapidly form new species!

Photo: Carex multispiculata from Chile, photographer: José Ignacio Márquez Corro

Study: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

DIG Field School The DIG Field School connects K-12 STEM teachers with scientific research and researchers through ongoing professional development and teaching curricula.

If you don't know about the @burkemuseum.bsky.social DIG Field School, it's a great time to learn about this PD program for K-12 educators and classrooms www.burkemuseum.org/education/ed...
Sign up for a Microfossil Workshop by Jan 3! and the DIG Field School applications open soon! #paleo #K12STEM

Plant fossil in two pieces showing small, well preserved, leaf.

This Dr. Paige Wilson Deibel's favorite fossil (our Paleobotany Collections Manager). She collected it in the Hell Creek Formation while researching plant communities before and after the Chicxulub asteroid impact. The research is now published!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Previously considered to be an optical illusion, Rico-Guevara’s close-up slow motion footage shows the tips of hummingbird beaks bend open as their tongue emerges while the rest of the beak is shut tight allowing the beak to fill with nectar.

Giant clam getting excavated out of the chalk. Curator for scale

The Burke Museum's Kelsie Abrams showing off all the hard work involved in stabilizing and cleaning the fossil clam in order to display it

The Burke Big Bivalve project is complete!
I excavated this clam with our crew back in 2014 and our founder, Mike Triebold, donated it the the Burke museum this spring.

Kelsie did an awesome job on this Platyceramus platinus from the Niobrara, measuring in around 4 feet in diameter. Go see it! 🧪 🦪

That’s no straw: Hummingbirds evolved surprisingly flexible bills to help them drink nectar Hummingbird bills — their long, thin beaks — look a little like drinking straws. But new research shows just how little water, or nectar, that comparison holds. University of Washington scientists...

New research from Curator Dr. Alejo Rico-Guevara

"A drinking hummingbird rapidly opens and shuts different parts of its bill simultaneously, engaging in an intricate and highly coordinated dance with its tongue to draw up nectar at lightning speeds."

www.washington.edu/news/2024/12...

Fossil Lab Manager Kelsie Abrams talking about her favorite extinct species. Gorgonopsids.

We sat down with Mammalogy Curator @sesantana.bsky.social to ask her about the cutest bats we’ve ever seen.

YouTube video by Burke Museum Meet The Real Spider-Man

Burke Curator Rod Crawford has been collecting spiders for over 50 years. Here's a short look into his process.

www.youtube.com/shorts/lcMtV...

We are so excited to share photos of archaeology in the Banda Islands, Indonesia. Burke staff Peter Lape, Sven Haakanson, and Laura Phillips are part of the PEMSEA team collaborating to train international students in community-based archaeology techniques.

YouTube video by Burke Museum Giant Fish Keep Washing Up in Oregon

Our new video with Fish Collections Manager Katherine Maslenikov hit 100k views on YouTube! Check it out below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC5J...

Rod Crawford has been collecting spiders for more than 50 years. His goal? Learn which spiders live across Washington state. The collection features more than 200,000 specimens, about 100,000 of which he collected (the rest are from volunteer assistants and donations).

Fossil Lab Manager Kelsie holding up gorgonopsid plushy happily

Gorgonopsid plushy compared with real gorgonopsid skull from Burke Paleontology Collections.

Gorgonopsid plushie from the gift store meets genuine gorgonopsid skull from our vertebrate paleontology collections. Gorgons are Burke Fossil Lab Manager Kelsie Abrams’ favorite ancient animals.