University of California Museum of Paleontology

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News & Updates

Posted by Nick Spano

It is clear, therefore, that we are now in an altogether exceptional period of the earth's history. We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared [...] - Alfred Russell Wallace, 1876, p. 150 The UCMP launched a pilot version of a new education and outreach resource for connecting Ice Age animal losses to today through interactive maps. This resource — Where the Wild Things Were — highlights the geographic … [Read more...] about Introducing: Where the Wild Things Were

Posted by UCMP

Next week on March 10, 2022, UCMP will be participating in the Big Give.   The UCMP continues to focus on bringing science and paleontology to broader, more diverse audiences. Your gift during the Big Give drive will help UCMP sustain and enhance our award-winning web resources Understanding Evolution, Understanding Science, and Understanding Global Change and provide us with the flexibility to advance and innovate in producing new and engaging learning modules for … [Read more...] about Support the UCMP on #CalBigGive Day!

Posted by UCMP

Kevin Padian, Curator Emeritus, co-edited a new Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir on the Late Cretaceous pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus. The eight articles in the Memoir shed new light on bones collected from Big Bend National Park in the 1970’s by Douglas Lawson who would later obtain his PhD at Berkeley. The SVP Memoir is highlighted in Berkeley News. Data and interpretations from scientists and illustrations from artists provide fascinating information on pterosaur anatomy, movement, and … [Read more...] about New Memoir on Quetzalcoatlus from Kevin Padian, Professor Emeritus

Posted by UCMP

The Understanding Evolution website has stood the test of time.  The site first launched in 2004, expanded into a premier resource for teaching and learning about evolution, and continues to attract millions of visitors a year.  Now a modernized and enhanced Understanding Evolution is ready for the next generation of users. Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Understanding Evolution’s overhaul was based on guidance from scientific and teacher advisors, as … [Read more...] about New features for an old favorite

Posted by UCMP

The campus is now open for the Fall Semester (at least for now). If you wish to visit the collections for research purposes*, please contact the appropriate Museum Scientist. *The UCMP is not open to the general public. Please see our FAQs for more information. … [Read more...] about UCMP Collections access for fall 2021

Posted by Emily Bogner

Greeting you at the entrance of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) is the ever-charismatic Nation’s T. rex, immediately grabbing your attention and drawing you in. Within the UCMP collections area your eyes dart to extinct marine reptiles lining the walls, plant fossils in the aisles with leaves larger than your torso, and woolly mammoth skulls tucked between cabinets. As a vertebrate paleontologist I’m captivated by these grand fossils, making it easy to overlook the … [Read more...] about Forgotten Fossils

Posted by Maya Samuels-Fair

Marine invertebrate zoology in Friday Harbor, Washington Paleontologists speak of Friday Harbor Labs in the nostalgic tones reserved for only the best field stations. As I hopped off my ferry to the San Juan Islands, carried my duffel bag through the namesake harbor town, and stepped at last under the campus’ old-growth cedars, it was clear why. I came to take FHL’s flagship summer course, Marine Invertebrate Zoology, which surveys forty phyla in as many days. In the mornings, we … [Read more...] about Forty phyla in forty days

Posted by Helina Chin

Against the backdrop of the loss of life and devastation brought on by COVID-19 and the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright, we are also witnessing an escalation in the number and severity of anti-Asian hate crimes. These attacks are compounded by the racist and xenophobic rhetoric of the recent administration that used the terms “China Virus” and “Kung-Flu” to describe the global pandemic.  As a first generation Asian American who grew up in the Bay … [Read more...] about Thoughts on Anti-Asian Hate

Posted by UCMP

Campus is currently closed to non-campus affiliates but is planning for in-person instruction in the Fall, 2021. For people wishing to visit the collections UCMP does not yet have a precise opening date, but we do not plan to open before September 2021. For updates, please check the Collections page. If you have loans to return, please contact the appropriate collections person BEFORE SHIPPING. … [Read more...] about UCMP Collections access update

Posted by UCMP

The UC Museum of Paleontology turns 100 this year! As part of this celebration, we’d like your support to help us reach 100 Gifts to celebrate our 100 Years, with the goal of making a significant contribution to our Education and Outreach Fund. Your gift to this fund will support expansion of our education and outreach efforts, helping us to reach broader, more diverse audiences On March 14, 1921, the museum was officially founded when the campus accepted a generous sum from our benefactor, … [Read more...] about UCMP celebrates 100 years

Posted by UCMP

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the UC Berkeley campus continues to be closed with access to the UCMP collections not possible. The UCMP staff continues to work from home and are not processing outgoing loans at this time.  If you have loans to return, please contact the appropriate collections person BEFORE SHIPPING. The university has informed us to anticipate working remotely through June 30, 2021.  We expect the collections to remain closed to outside researchers until at … [Read more...] about Access to the UCMP Collections remain restricted

Posted by Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media relations

Bill Clemens had been excavating fossils in eastern Montana’s Hell Creek Formation for more than 10 years, focusing primarily on the small mammals that scurried around the feet of dinosaurs and other Mesozoic Era creatures, when, in 1980, Walter and Luis Alvarez at the University of California, Berkeley, proposed that the dinosaurs and most of life on Earth were wiped out at the end of the Mesozoic by an asteroid or comet impact. As a paleontologist who had unearthed myriad fossils from … [Read more...] about William Clemens, expert on fossil mammals, dies at 88

Posted by UCMP

Fossils recovered from Antarctica in the 1980s represent the oldest giant members of an extinct group of birds that patrolled the southern oceans with wingspans of up to 21 feet that would dwarf the 11½-foot wingspan of today’s largest bird, the wandering albatross. Called pelagornithids, the birds filled a niche much like that of today’s albatrosses and traveled widely over Earth’s oceans for at least 60 million years. Though a much smaller pelagornithid fossil dates from 62 million years … [Read more...] about Antarctica yields oldest fossils of giant birds with 21-foot wingspans

Posted by UCMP

What was the Ice Age like in the Bay Area?  That's the question a Half Moon Bay middle-schooler posed to KQED's Bay Curious podcast.  Retired professor Doris Sloan and Museum Scientist Patricia Holroyd talk with KQED's Dan Potter about the landscape and animals present here during the last Ice Age and reveal some surprising fun facts.   Listen to the podcast … [Read more...] about What was the Ice Age like in the Bay Area?

Posted by UCMP

Birds and bird eggs are familiar stuff: we see them daily in our backyards and even in our kitchens. But ask the classic questions: where did egg laying come from and how did it get that way? Answers are hard to come by. A gravid theropod dinosaur discovered with fossilized eggs still inside it helps explain how birds evolved their distinctive ways of reproducing. Described in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by recent UCMP alumnus Ashley Poust and co-authors from China and … [Read more...] about Best laid plans: a new fossil of a dinosaur mother full of eggs and information

Posted by UCMP

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the UC Berkeley campus is currently closed and access to the UCMP collections is not possible. Please be advised we are not processing outgoing loans at this time.  If you have loans to return, please contact the appropriate collections person BEFORE SHIPPING. The university has informed us to anticipate working from home through Jun 30, 2021.  Hence, we expect the collections will remain closed to outside researchers until at least that … [Read more...] about Access to the UCMP Collections remains restricted

Posted by Lisa White, Assistant Director, Education & Outreach

The UCMP is committed to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion through our research and educational missions. In the wake of the chaotic events related to racism, police brutality, and conflict currently taking place in Minnesota, in the Bay Area, and beyond, we ask ourselves: how can a scientific community like the UCMP best address or respond to these social issues? Like many groups and individuals across the country, we are currently engaging this question and seek to expand our efforts … [Read more...] about Diversity and inclusion at UCMP

Posted by Peter A. Kloess

Confinement at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to reflect on the pace of my research over the last year. Thinking back to Aesop’s fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, I see that my research has adopted traits from both animals: sometimes moving slow and steady, while other times travelling at break-neck speed. Despite this variability in research pace, the UCMP has been a constant presence during my research through its supportive staff and generous financial … [Read more...] about The tortoise and the hare: the varied pace of research

Posted by Mackenzie Kirchner-Smith and Ixchel Gonzalez-Ramirez

During the summer of 2019 we (graduate students Mackenzie Kirchner-Smith and Ixchel Gonzalez-Ramirez) spent a month working in the Paleobotanical Collections of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in DC as part of the NSF-sponsored Pteridophyte Collection Consortium project (PCC). This project, led by PIs Carl Rothfels, Diane Erwin and Cindy Looy, seeks to digitize more than 1.7 million modern and fossil pteridophyte specimens. During the month at the NMNH we digitized more than 700 … [Read more...] about Back to the Devonian for the Pteridophyte Collection Consortium (PCC) project

Posted by UCMP

What future for turtles?  Our best guide to the future is the study of a group's past.  Senior Museum Scientist Patricia Holroyd, in collaboration with United Kingdom scientists led by Terri Cleary, present a comprehensive new study  in the journal Palaeontology detailing the origin and spread of turtles for the first 250 million years of their evolution.  Read more about the work at the Natural History Museum website.  … [Read more...] about Will turtles survive climate change?

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The UCMP is primarily a research museum and our collections are only open to the public during our annual open house on Cal Day. However, we have a limited number of fossil exhibits on display, including a magnificent Tyrannosaurus rex . These can be viewed, free of charge, any time the Valley Life Sciences Building is open. Learn more here.

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