Several times a summer, three vans depart The University of Alabama, bound for Shark Tooth Creek. For years, the Alabama Museum of Natural History has hosted fossil expeditions to the sandy creek bed where shovels full of clay and gravel can yield prehistoric finds. The vans are packed to the doors with kids, parents, grandparents and a few amateur paleontologists who just love the hunt. The Alabama Black Belt represents an ancient coastline, so the fossil expedition site was once ocean s...| Alabama Museum of Natural History
Cyclida are an enigmatic, extinct group of crustaceans. They lived in the oceans from the Carboniferous Period till the end of the Cretaceous Period (~360 – 66 million years ago). How they relate to other groups of crustaceans has been debated for more than a century. Cyclids are small (mostly < 2 cm) and thus hard to recognize. As a result, this group remains understudied in terms of diversity (55 species only) and ecology. Smaller individuals may have been parasites, but larger ones could...| Alabama Museum of Natural History
The ammonite Hoploscaphites nicolletii with a lateral injury on both sides (shell missing). From Tajika et al. (2025).| Alabama Museum of Natural History
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Blue Star Museums is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and Blue Star Families, in collaboration with the Department of Defense and museums across America, offering free admission to the nation’s active-duty military personnel and their families, including National Guard and Reserve.| National Endowment for the Arts