Science Division News

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has recently been awarded a prestigious collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation's Frontier Research in Earth Sciences program. The nearly $3 million collaborative research grant, led by the Museum whose portion is over $1,280,000, is the largest research grant ever received by this institution. Throughout the course of the grant, the Museum’s team will share their findings in classrooms, museum exhibits and outreach at their home institutions to reach audiences spanning many ages and backgrounds.  

Not only will this project help researchers understand the evolution of many modern plants and animals but will also provide unique insights into the current biodiversity crisis facing the planet, as ancient extinctions can teach about the extinctions happening today. This ambitious five-year research project has assembled a large, multidisciplinary team of scientists and is being led by Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Dr. Tyler Lyson.

Curator of Entomology Frank Krell just published a paper entitled "The Silent Extinction of Species and Taxonomists - An Appeal to Science Policymakers and Legislators".

Postdoctoral Fellow Holger Petermann was recently featured in the New York Times for his research on fossil turtle compaction.  

Read the Article

Read the Paper, co-authored by Tyler Lyson, Ian Miller and James Hagadorn.

Gussie Maccracken, our new curator of paleobotany, recently co-authored a paper published in Ecology: "Sampling bias and the robustness of ecological metrics for plant-damage-type association networks".  In it, the authors explore the utility and sensitivity of network analyses for plant-insect interactions in deep time.  

Hear 2017 Teen Science Scholar Isiah Newbins' story on how the TSS program impacted his scientific career.

Richard Keith Stucky passed away on May 4, 2022, following a courageous battle with lung cancer.  It would be hard to overstate Richard Stucky’s impact on your Museum. During more than 25 years on staff, Stucky served as preparator, Earth sciences department head, curator of vertebrate paleontology, chief curator, vice president of research & collections, vice president of programs and curator of paleoecology & evolution.

Stucky and his wife, Barbara, have long supported the Museum financially and donated treasures to its collections. In 2016 they joined the Edwin Carter Legacy Society. Their trust provides for the establishment of a postdoctoral fellowship fund at the Museum that is modeled after a fund at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History of Pittsburgh. In 1982, Stucky was a Rea Postdoctoral Fellow at that museum.

In 2021, another generous Museum donor, Dolores Schlessman, was inspired to make a major gift in Stucky’s honor. After consulting with Richard and Barbara, Dolores’ gift established this fund immediately. Over time, distributions from the Stucky Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund will accumulate to support a Stucky Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science Division. The Museum is deeply grateful to Dolores Schlessman and to Richard and Barbara Stucky for this amazing circle of generous support.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science and its supporting organization, the DMNS Foundation, have received a $25 million gift from an anonymous donor. This is the largest gift in the institution’s 121-year history.

“We are amazed by the donor’s generosity and vision,” said George Sparks, Museum President & CEO. “The support will vastly expand the Museum’s capacity for collections conservation."

"Collections are treasures held in the public trust. Preserving them and making them accessible to source communities, scientists and the public has long been an institutional priority,” said Museum Director of Anthropology and Senior Curator of Archaeology Stephen E. Nash. “This unprecedented gift will take our work to another level, with the expertise and state-of-the-art analytical equipment needed to advance the field and train the next generation of conservation professionals from a wide range of backgrounds. It will position the Museum as a leader in culturally-inclusive object conservation in the Rocky Mountain region, nationally and internationally.”

Ten percent of the funds will go directly to the museum for initial staffing, equipment and launch activities, while 90% will establish an endowed fund at the DMNS Foundation. Annual distributions from the endowment will support the Museum’s conservation work over the long term.