News

Jordon Loucks is a Ph.D student at SUNY Albany and works at the Museum to conduct research for his doctoral program. Jordon's research is focused on early 19th century immigrants in the Northeast United States, with a particular emphasis on Iri...

From rocks to gems to minerals, there are thousands of specimens in the Museum's mineralogy collection. "Every mineral can tell you a story," says Dr. Marian Lupulescu, curator of geology at the State Museum. Many New York pegmatite rock minera...

One of the first things archaeologists seek to understand when they are investigating a site is the stratigraphy. This entails both documentary research and ground-truthing through test excavations like shovel test pits (STPs) or small excavation ...

The Million Dollar Beach Site was identified in August of 2013 during a survey of the area around the DEC parking lot and campground prior to road improvements (see Photo 1). This survey proceeded directly into limited test excavations after the d...

In October 2015 the Museum opened a newly renovated area of Bird Hall - "Tidal Bays and Marshes". There are a total of six "bays" in Bird Hall, and Museum staff will be renovating each bay to give visitors a renewed Birds of New York exhibiti...

Did you know that fossils of the Earth's oldest trees are part of the State Museum's collections? In the late 19th century, scientists uncovered evidence of the world's oldest known forest in Gilboa, NY (Schoharie County). Since then, the Museum h...

Dissakisite-(Ce) - Ca(Ce,REE)(Mg,Fe2+)(Al,Fe3+)2Si3O12(OH) - the magnesium analogue of the more common allanite (Ce), was found in a specimen from the Henry Rudy Farm, in Orange County. It occurs as millimeter-size pink crystals associated wi...

Two papers have been published describing ornithological research by NYSM scientists. The papers are based on Ph.D. dissertation work conducted by Dr. Joel Ralston, former University at Albany graduate student, and NYSM Graduate Fellow under the s...

Since 2012, archaeologists from the State Museum have been working alongside a highway construction project in Utica, uncovering artifacts from the early 19th century. Why? The archaeologists are members of the Cultural Resources Survey Pr...

The Museum recently acquired a series of 1917 Franklin County women's suffrage petitions from Jean Kubaryk, a teacher at North Warren Central School District. Ms. Kubaryk had been displaying the petitions in her classroom for years, but ...

The Museum recently acquired a unique collection of 20th century Abenaki Native American materials. The collection was donated by Rodney Johnson of Rochester, NY. Rodney wanted to find a permanent home for the collection that had been handed down ...

The State Museum recently acquired an archaeological collection from the former Institute for Long Island Archaeology at Stony Brook University. This collection consists of artifacts from 47 significant archaeological sites, including both pr...

On June 15, 2015, State Museum Director Mark Schaming presented a renovation master plan for the Museum's galleries to the New York State Board of Regents. The master plan calls for 35,000 square feet of new exhibitions, a changeable wall system a...

The New York State Museum’s history collections contain two frog costumes for humans and one frog costume for a dog. These costumes belonged to Harry and Friede DeMarlo, a vaudeville couple that once played circuses and vaudeville houses all over ...

When former Research and Collections Assistant Director and Curator of Ichthyology Dr. Robert Daniels retired in late 2012, he took with him over 30 years of specialist knowledge of the Museum’s fish collection, as well as key information about th...

New York State Museum archaeologists have identified archaeological remains associated with a small Early Archaic camp dating to approximately 8,000 B.C. along the shore of Lake George in Warren County, New York. The site produced bifurcate and Ge...