New research out of the Museum today is the first to provide definitive proof that green algae eat bacteria. The finding, captured with electron microscope images, offers a glimpse at how scientists think early organisms acquired free-living chloroplasts, the structures responsible for converting light into food. This event is thought to be a critical first step in the evolution of photosynthetic algae and land plants, which helped raise oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere and paved the way for the rise of animals.

Excavations at Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca have recovered the region’s earliest known temple precinct, which, according to a new study by the American Museum of Natural History, existed about 1,500 years earlier than similar temples described by colonial Europeans. The findings are described this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1908, as an eager young assistant at the Museum, Roy Chapman Andrews got an opportunity that would transform his career as a field naturalist: a chance to travel the world studying whales.