Selected press releases in English

DNFS and CETAF We are proud to announce that the CETAF Code of Conduct on Access and Benefit Sharing has just been officially recognised as the first best practice on ABS by the European Commission. The CETAF Code of Conduct (CoC) was submitted officially for recognition as best practice to the EU under Article 8 […]

Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology Researchers at the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology (SNSB-BSPG) and LMU Munich describe a hitherto unknown bird from the late Jurassic period. It is the second bird capable of flight, after the famous Archaeopteryx, to be identified from this era. Archaeopteryx’s throne is tottering. Since the discovery […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology Scientists of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (SNSB-ZSM) and the University of Göttingen have discovered two new species of giant stick insects, which measure more than 20 centimeters body length and are among the largest insects in Madagascar. Unlike most other stick insects the adult males of these phasmids […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology An international team of scientists has named five new species of tiny frogs found across the island of Madagascar. The largest of them could sit happily on your thumbnail. The smallest is just longer than a grain of rice. The study was published in the open access mega-journal PLoS ONE. […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology Another great success for the Bavarian State Collection for Zoology: 661 species of digger wasps, closely related to the bees, were genetically investigated through DNA barcoding. Together with colleagues from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Canada, ZSM scientists have published the results of an international project to create a genetic […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology During the Late Pleistocene period (between 125,000 to 12,000 years ago) two bear species roamed Europe: brown bears (Ursus arctos) and extinct cave bears (Ursus spelaeus s.l.). It is generally assumed that fossil brown bears had a similar diet to extant brown bears, but the situation is not as clear […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology During the Late Pleistocene period (between 125,000 to 12,000 years ago) two bear species roamed Europe: omnivorous brown bears (Ursus arctos) and the extinct mostly vegetarian cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Until now, very little is known about the dietary evolution of the cave bear and how it became a vegetarian, […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology Madagascar is a chameleon paradise. More than 40% of the 206 known species are found exclusively on the island. A team of researchers based in Munich, Germany and Madagascar have now discovered three new species, among them a beautifully coloured rainbow chameleon, and a species with a large hole in […]

LMU Munich & Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology LMU/SNSB researchers report the first description of the geologically oldest fossil securely attributable to the genus Archaeopteryx, and provide a new diagnostic key for differentiating bird-like dinosaurs from their closest relatives. Some 150 million years ago in what is now Northern Bavaria, Archaeopteryx – the […]

Bavarian State Collection for Zoology Chameleons are famous for their colour language. Using colour changes and colourful patterns they communicate with their conspecifics. A research team from Munich, Germany, has now found that many chameleons have bony tubercles on their head, which glow blue under UV light and form impressive patterns. The skin in this […]