Selected press releases in English

Zoologische Staatssammlung München The differences are in the details: Special 3D shape analyses of the jaws and dentitions of cave bears and brown bears living at the same time from the fossil site in the caves of Goyet in Belgium show their clearly different food spectrum. In contrast, the diet of brown bears living around […]

LMU, Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology und Geology, Bavarian State Collection for Zoology LMU and SNSB researchers have identified coral-eating crown-of-thorns seastars in the Red Sea as distinct species that occurs only in this location. Tropical coral reefs are among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth. In addition to climate change, coral-eating crown-of-thorns seastars (Acanthaster […]

A German-Czech research team presents a new binational data infrastructure. Over the past four years, the project “Flora of the Bohemian Forest” has made scientific data available from historical species monitoring projects in both countries as well as new data on the current plant diversity of the Bohemian Forest (Šumava). The data is publicly online […]

Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München Genetic analyses by an international team involving researchers from the Bavarian State Collection for Paleoanatomy an the LMU Munich show that the Romans were the first to bring mules to Central Europe. Before horses were the only riding animals used by people there. Until the end of the Iron Age in […]

New research transforms our understanding of the circumstances and timing of the domestication of chickens, their spread across Asia into the west, and reveals the changing way in which they were perceived in societies over the past 3,500 years. Experts have found that an association with rice farming likely started a process that has led […]

Bavarian Statecollection of Botany / SNSB IT-Center The IT Center of the Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB) presented its new app ‘DiversityNaviKey’ (DNK) – a tool for reliable identification of natural science objects. The application is based on scientific data sources managed by the established database system of the SNSB, Diversity Workbench. The freely accessible […]

SNSB researchers determine the exact diet of Australian carnivorous plants by analyzing the genes of their prey. Even tiny parasites on captured insects could be detected in this way. The scientists have now published the results of their study in the journal Scientific Reports. Carnivorous plants attract, catch and digest small animals in order to […]

Bavarian State Collection of Palaeoanatomy The Sumerians evidently used horse-like animals in their war campaigns as early as 4,500 years ago. For the first time, a team of French researchers has been able to use ancient DNA analyses to taxonomically classify the earliest hybrid animals bred by humans, which were used in warfare in Mesopotamia […]

Bavarian State Collection of Zoology The extinct Haast’s eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) is the largest known eagle. New research findings suggest that the giant eagle was an active hunter using its talons and beak to restrain and kill huge terrestrial birds, then feeding on the carcass like a vulture due to a preference for internal organs. […]

Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology Paleontologists of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie (SNSB-BSPG) examined the remains of the long-necked dinosaur Patagosaurus fariasi (175 million years) from Argentina as part of a new description. These investigations have great significance for the understanding of sauropod evolution. The researchers published their results in the […]