Tags: Museum News

S. elongata on Finger Tip
The Fastest Jaws in Nature- the ultra-fast bite

  Dr. Doug Booher, a collection associate with the Museum's Arthropod Collection is the lead author on the paper "Functional innovation promotes diversification of form in the evolution of an ultrafast trap-jaw mechanism in ants" just published in PLOS Biology. The article is available freely from this weblink http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001031. Dr. Booher spent many an hour working…

An image of Dr. James W. Porter standing among the GMNH's shell collection.
Grand Opening: Corals from the Georgia Museum of Natural History!

UPDATE: Due to Hurricane Helene, this opening has been rescheduled for Friday, October 18 at 10 am Join us this Friday, September 27th at 10 AM for the grand opening of Corals from the Georgia Museum of Natural History in the Odum School of Ecology foyer! The exhibition has been curated by Dr. James W Porter, Curator of Marine Invertebrates and Meigs Professor of Ecology, Emeritus. Continental breakfast will be served from 10-11 AM, and the…
Tags: Museum News

Larissa McPherson cataloging a specimen
Fall 2024- UGA MFA student, Larissa McPherson, participates in directed study with GMNH

Larissa McPherson is a Master of Fine Arts student in jewelry and metalwork at UGA. During Fall 2024 semester, she is participating in a directed study with the Georgia Museum of Natural History under the supervision of her graduate adviser, Demi Thomloudis, and GMNH collection manager, Nicole Pontzer. Her directed study with the museum is an exciting example of the creative and cross-disciplinary possibilities available at UGA. We recently…

Dr. Betsy Reitz, curator of Zooarchaeology, leads a tour for a visiting UGA class
Full Schedule of Tours at GMMH Fall 2023

The Georgia Museum of Natural History has had an active and full schedule of tours this semester! In fact, the Museum reached capacity for our Fall 2023 tour calendar and has begun scheduling tours for Spring semester 2024. Since the start of Fall semester, the Museum has hosted 22 different tour groups at both our campus gallery and our off-campus curation annex. The tours this Fall have included various school groups from elementary to high…


Newest GMNH exhibit, Birds of a Feather

The staff of the Georgia Museum of Natural History recently completed their newest public exhibit, Birds of a Feather. This exhibit highlights many of the regional and exotic birds in the Ornithology collection as well as anecdotes about birds, including migration, diversity, intelligence, and threats to birds. The exhibit is currently on display in the Odum School of Ecology lobby. 
Tags: Nicole Pontzer

Joro Spider Braselton Ga 2014
The Joro Spider 2022

The Museum solicits information and photographs on the Joro Spider (Trichonephila clavata). Please send emails with photographs and locality information to this address--   ugajoro@gmail.com.  The museum is curating the hundreds of records sent to us since we published the initial discovery article in 2015.   The Joro Spider is now a commonly seen large spider across northeast Georgia. We suggest that the Joro has been…

Carnivore Exhibit
Virtual Slide Show of the Carnivore Gallery Exhibit Posted

During the 2020/2021 gallery closure (due to COVID and nearby construction), Museum staff created a slide show of the Carnivore exhibit. Though a new exhibit is now on display in our gallery, you can still view a digital version of this popular exhibit.


A COVID Era Museum Internship

    The COVID pandemic has caused many problems for the GMNH internship program especially due to the Museum Building being closed to non-staff.  The UGA Collection of Arthropods (UGCA) accepted only one undergraduate intern this spring, Kerstin Thulé, who we expected to work at the Biological Sciences Building preparing off-site specimens.  As the spring term progressed, however, we realized that another option was possible…

Joro Spider
Georgia Museum of Natural History conducted the analysis, looking for more sightings

When Wesley Huffmaster spotted a big, brightly colored and boldly patterned spider near his home in Colbert last fall, he knew it was unusual. Analysis of its physical characteristics and DNA by scientists at the Georgia Museum of Natural History at the University of Georgia have proven him right, confirming the first known occurrence in North America of Nephila clavata, the East Asian Joro spider. Their findings appear in the online open access…

Bones
A Whale of a Task!

The Georgia Museum of Natural History is excited about the addition of hundreds of specimens of marine mammals and other animals to our research collection. These specimens include skins, skulls, postcranial skeletons, and fluid-preserved materials. We look forward to sharing this impressive collection with the public in the near future. The museum acquired these specimens recently from the Northeastern University Vertebrate Collection in Nahant…
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