Oakland’s Lake Merritt is a haven for foraminifera — but some of the lake’s forams are deformed. UCMP Curator Ken Finger explains how he and his colleagues are using foraminifera as indicators of pollution.

Not all fossils are discovered by paleontologists combing the earth on special expeditions. Many fossils are found by accident — particularly during construction projects.

Speciation isn’t always slow — sometimes, we can see evidence of evolution over a very short period of time. This month’s Evo in the news: Speciation in real time looks at two examples of speedy speciation — in the Central European blackcap, and the Galapagos finches.

This past summer, Ralph Stearley of Calvin College visited the UCMP, and he did a little fishing. He pulled some spectacular specimens from the murky depths of the cabinets.

Hundreds of thousands of people cross San Francisco Bay each day. But as commuters zip through the BART tunnel or drive over the bridges, they probably don’t think about what the Bay looked like in the past – or what it will look like in the future. Throughout the five talks at this year’s Short Course, attendees learned about the ever-changing San Francisco Bay.

Graduate student Jake Enk visited the UCMP to saw off chunks of mammoth teeth. Next, he’ll extract their DNA.

UCMP graduate student Kaitlin Maguire is working with the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose to develop an exhibit about Lupé, a fossil mammoth discovered in the nearby Guadalupe River. Development of the exhibit is moving along quickly as exhibit ideas come to life in prototyping labs.

The Tawa team returned to the UCMP a few weeks ago, looking at old fossils in the context of new ones.