Museum of Natural and Cultural History

Celebrate #Oregon's birthday by nominating an organization or individual for the museum's stewardship award! It recognizes a project that involves the community in meaningful ways and aligns with the museum's mission to inspire stewardship of our past, present, and future. tiny.cc/6nxy001

Elizabeth smiles at the camera. She's wearing blue vinyl gloves and holding up a woven basket. 

A screenshot of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. The article title is visible and reads "Elizabeth Kallenbach -Trailblazer" 

Elizabeth Kallenbach has been named as a "Trailblazer" by the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology! Her research expands the ability to identify fibers, providing a more complete understanding of the plants people in the Great Basin and Oregon have used for more than 14,000 years.🧪🏺🏛️

A stock photo of a cute little mouse peering over green grass. Text reads "The Past is the Key to the Future: Oregon's Fossil Rodents and the Impacts of Environmental Change; Thursday, February 12, 6:00 p.m. Humans’ impact on the environment is reshaping climates and landscapes. To understand these changes and guess at our future, we must look back to the deep past. Join paleontologist Samantha Hopkins as she explores how changes recorded in Oregon’s rich fossil record help us understand the ecological impacts of environmental change.    Included with regular admission; free for MNCH members and UO ID card holders. Show your Oregon Trail or other EBT card for an admission discount. "

Close to Eugene? Join us next Thursday, February 12 at 6pm for a talk about how studying Oregon's tiny fossil rodents helps us prepare for the impacts of climate change. #fossilfriday 🧪🏛️

Publication alert! New research from MNCH and University of Nevada, Reno analyzes the oldest-known sewn hide and fine bone needles, helping us better understand the complex lives of humans in Oregon's high desert 12,000 years ago. Read the paper here: shorturl.at/HX3E0 🧪🏺🏛️

It's up through the end of March (Sunday, March 29, is its final day). Hope you can make it!

A wooden box folds out into a bronze scale. 

A case full of tea cups and bowl fragments. 

A case with rusted pointy tools and a label reading "railroad spikes: Buck Rock Tunnel, Jackson County, 1880s"

Workers immigrating from China built many of the industries we consider quintessentially Oregonian: hop farming, seafood canning, gold mining, railroads. Our exhibit Roots and Resilience tells some of their story. Check out the online exhibit here: shorturl.at/vWxK8

A painted portrait of the historical photo from the last post. It's Louisa Sewell, a young Black woman, seated and holding a Black child in the classic Madonna and child pose. The background is a vibrant rust orange with patterns of "pixelated" dots. Louisa's dress is a deep-hued blue with white flowers. On the right of the canvas are three stripes: pink, white, and brown.

The local newspaper of the time, Grant County News, mentioned Louisa as building a croquet course, hosting parties, and making homemade ice cream. The stripes on this portrait, painted by Jeremy Okai Davis, are a reference to Neapolitan ice cream. /🧵🏛️🎨

An old photograph of a young black woman sitting and holding a child. The pose is reminiscent of the classical Madonna and child pose. Louisa, the mother, is wearing a fitted dress with a flower pattern. Photo credit: Grant County Historical Museum.

Meet Louisa Sewell: One of Oregon's Black pioneers featured in ReEnvisioned: Contemporary Portraits of our Black Ancestors. Louisa moved to Canyon City in Grant County to live with her husband Columbus, a wealthy miner and businessman in 1868. #history #blackhistorymonth🧵

Our opening night was incredible! Thank you to everyone that came out. 🎉 ReEnvisioned is now open! Come see the stories that are often left out of Oregon's history. These ten portraits will reshape how we remember Oregon's past.🖤✨

#universityoforegon #art #museum #oregonhistory #blackhistory

@uocas.bsky.social masters student and paleontologist Andy takes us behind the scenes to break down the tools she uses to work on Wally #paleosky #fossilfriday ⚒️🧰 🐋✨ 🧪🏛️

A graphic with a picture of Mariah Rocker and text reading "Black Pioneers Revealed: The Stories behind the ReEnvisioned Exhibit with Mariah Rocker from Oregon Black Pioneers. Thursday, January 29. 6:00 p.m." 

There are 17 Black Oregonian pioneers represented in ReEnvisioned: Contemporary Portraits of Our Black Ancestors. Join Mariah Rocker from @oregonblackpioneers.org on January 29 to meet the people behind the portraits. 🏛️

check out this starter pack we put together, too:
go.bsky.app/Ko2Bvky

Lauren takes a selfie with a shelving unit full of animal skulls and horns. 

Robyn takes a landscape selfie in front of the mammoth sculptures on a beautiful sunny day. Emerald takes a selfie with Chris and Marlene in a laboratory.

Jon, wearing a hard hat and high visibility gear, takes a selfie in the forest. Andrew stares at a squirrel skull resting on his fist. 

And here's what I was actually supposed to be doing today! Happy #MuseumSelfieDay from a staff that provided me with a lot of squirrel content!

A squirrel sits on a tree branch in the museum courtyard. Its fluffy red tail hangs down, ostensibly for balance but really for cuteness. It's eating something with its cute grabby hands...probably my lunch.

Alright, thanks for reading my #SquirrelAppreciationDay photodump. Thanks to Andrew (archaeologist) for the modern skull photoshoot and Sam (paleontologist) for the fossil skull photoshoot and for finding a real acorn for scale.

Lastly, thanks to the campus squirrels. Stop taking my lunch.

An acorn. Next to it sits a little pedestal with an individual fossil squirrel tooth on top. The tooth is the size of the stem of the acorn (very very small). This tooth is from a flying squirrel from 16 million years ago. 

This tiny tiny tooth fossil is from a flying squirrel from about 17 million years ago, collected near Paulina, Oregon! All these fossils are evidence of woodlands & forests in the areas these squirrels lived in.

A top-down view of the skull & lower right jawbone, again.

OH this is a skull & a right lower jaw, sorry, I forgot to mention that!

The earliest members of the squirrel family (37 million years agoish) lived in and were dependent on trees. Ground squirrels (prairie dogs, marmots, etc.) didn't evolve until about 20 million years ago.

A blue background with an acorn. About twice the size of the acorn is a fossil skull, the type specimen of Protosciurus condoni - the top is separated from the lower jaw, but they are arranged close together. Tiny little teeth stick out from the lower jaw. 

A top-down view of the fossil skull and jaw. The skull is turned upside down, exposing 8 tiny dark grey teeth. The jawbone has four teeth exposed. 

IT'S FOSSIL SQUIRREL TIME.

This is the type specimen of Protosciurus, a genus of tree squirrels. It was collected by Thomas Condon (one of the @uoregon.bsky.social's first three professors) in 1870 and is 28 million yearsish old. It was found in the John Day Formation.

Andrew Boehm grins and holds a drawer with 19 small boxes in it, all full of various squirrel bones. My favorite label is "unidentified squirrel mandibles," which is also my new band name.

Archaeologist Andrew Boehm has a clean squirrel skull perched on his fist, staring at him. He stares back. 

Andrew now holds the squirrel skull so it looks at the camera, staring deeply into my soul. He smiles as if it's not creepy.

Meanwhile, dead modern squirrels are inside our comparative collection. Our deputy director of archaeological science Andrew Boehm really answered my call for "squirrel pictures."

Peep that drawer full of squirrel bones and then peep that there are two more behind it. 👀

The background is one of the museum courtyard porticos with a Chabre gargoyle of a raven. In the foreground, a grey squirrel struts toward the camera, its fluffy tail perked up in interest. 

A perfectly shaped angel of a squirrel struts down a tree like a model down a catwalk. One of the museum's interpretive signs is visible in front of the tree, reading "Red Alder."

Part of the museum courtyard. The baby mammoth sculpture in the background, the foreground is green grass and a grey squirrel sits demurely on its hind legs, looking at the sculpture.

Our campus squirrels at @uoregon.bsky.social love our Native Plants Courtyard. And my lunch.

I think these are either Eastern fox squirrels or Eastern gray squirrels (ODFW identifies 4 native and 2 invasive species of tree squirrels in Oregon) but please, squirrel experts, jump in here.

A sunny day in the museum courtyard. In the foreground is a curious squirrel perched on the armrest of a bench looking at the camera. The mother mammoth sculpture looms over it, and the squirrel's luscious fluffy tail follows the curve of the mammoth's trunk. 

Listen y'all, I love squirrels so much and I dragged our entire staff into this #SquirrelAppreciationDay project so I have way too many pictures and thoughts for one post. 🧵incoming. 🏛️🧪

Get ready for a brand new exhibit opening coming this weekend! Enjoy a quiet little sneak peek as our team works behind the scenes ✨🎧 Join us this Friday for the opening to come see it for yourself!

📍 Galleria
📅 Friday, January 16
⏰ 6:00 to 7:30 pm

@uoregon.bsky.social master's student and paleontologist Andy returns to show us more about preparing Wally for display! 🐋✨#paleosky #fossilfriday 🧪🏛️

Recent investigations have linked Chinese Americans with more than 30 historic ranches in Eastern Oregon.

Read the full story here https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/07/eastern-oregon-chinese-cowboys-trail/ 

A close up of the black fabric introduction panel. The title "Transgressors" crosses the top of the panel in bright pink font, with a rainbow ribbon winding around it. Underneath the title is text reading "transgressor. noun. 1: someone or something that transgresses, going beyond a boundary or limit." 

A wide view of the Transgressors exhibit. Black pillars with pictures of the artists and short bios are sprinkled throughout the space. Colorful woven corn by Geo Neptune and an illuminated box with art by Steph Littlebird are visible. 

In the center of the frame is a black rectangle with pink text reading "What does a future with us in it look like? Everyone is encouraged to draw or write to add to the wall. Use this wall as a communal wish." The rectangle is surrounded by pieces of white paper, some with colorful drawings, some with text reflections. At least 15 pieces of paper are visible.

Transgressors closes Sunday, January 4! This exhibit, originally presented at Chachalu Tribal Museum and Cultural Center, showcases nine artists exploring the past, present, and future of Indigenous queer identity and is curated by Anthony Hudson and Felix Furby. #indigenousart #pnw

Wally! I remember him from when we had him at Bill Sullivan's old place 😊 so glad he's being worked on again! NARG has meetings the first Wednesday of every month at the Tualatin Heritage Center in Tualatin, OR, from 6-9pm. Meetings are open to the public. There's a lecture & we share our fossils

Meet Wally the Whale, a fossilized whale skull currently being prepared for display. @uoregon.bsky.social student and paleontologist Andy Quintanilla is hard at work putting Wally back together again. #paleosky 🧪🏛️

A graphic titled "Winter Holiday Hours" with the museum mammoth logo, except the mammoths are wearing a festive red scarf and hat set. 

Bring your family and come visit us this holiday season! We're open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. December 19-21, 27-28, and January 2-4, which will be the last weekend Transgressors is on view.

A portrait-mode photograph of a power board carved out of light beige wood. The board is hanging on one of the dark brown wood columns in front of the museum on the University of Oregon campus. Visible on the board is a face surrounded by geometric designs. Above that face is another face. 

Check out the newest addition to our entrance! Greg A. Robinson (Chinook), our 2025 Featured Contemporary Artist, crafted this power board. The lower figure represents a Tayi, a leader in Chinook clans, and the upper figure represents their tamanawas, or spirit power. #IndigenousArt

A porcelain shard on gravel next to a tape measure. The shard is about 3 inches long. It’s got a white porcelain background with red Chinese characters and part of the longevity pattern. This is right after archaeologists found the shard.

A picture of the stratigraphy of the trench. Superimposed over the picture is text identifying each layer. On the top is “gravel from current project” and on the very bottom is “silty loam.”

A wide shot of a trench in downtown Eugene. The trench is about w feet wide and 20 feet long, snaking through a gravel pit. Two archaeologists stand up to their ribcages in the trench, wearing bright orange tshirts and hard hats. Construction equipment is visible behind them.

Check out these photos from a 2020 excavation in downtown Eugene! This project revealed items from an early 1900s Chinese restaurant and gift shop owned by Wing Kee and Marie Westfall. You can see some of these artifacts in our exhibit Roots and Resilience.🏛️🏺

A University of Oregon student looks closely at a cow vertebrae.

Our exhibit Explore Oregon goes deep into Oregon’s past and joins a conversation about our collective future. Come visit our Ice Age skeletons!