Ian Owens of @NHM_London on natural history "for the learned and curious" at the @Smithsonian 's @NMNH

The Smithsonian's @NMNH Dodo, exhibited first at the Lewis & Clark Exposition, 1905

"The United States National Museum has recently purchased, for exhibition at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, the skeleton of a dodo, Didus ineptus. The specimen lacks the back part of the skull and the ribs, and the pelvis is imperfect behind. Some of the phalanges have been restored. As mounted, the height of the skeleton is 0.66 m. Beside this skeleton, the National Museum possesses a cast of the foot and of the dried head which are in the museum of Oxford University, and also a cast of the skull in the Royal Zoological Museum at Copenhagen (Nos. 16,954, 55, 57). By the aid of these casts and the excellent drawings published by Owen in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, it is anticipated that the skeleton can be completely restored without difficulty."
F. W. True. "Dodo Skeleton" in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Volume 47 (1905), Plate LXXVI, p. 17.

Recently (November 2014), the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History opened a new exhibition, "The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost World"

Originally, the dodo skeleton was exhibited at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland Oregon (which opened on this date in 1905). You can find information about the Smithsonian's exhibition there at Smithsonian Institution Archives collection.

Here's the collection record (you can search for "V 16856" here to find the record):

Catalog Number:	USNM V 16856
Collection Name:	Aves Indian Ocean
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Columbiformes
Family:	Columbae
Common Name:	Dodo
Scientific Name (As Filed):	Raphus cucullatus (Linneaus)
Country:	Mauritius
Geologic Age:	Era System Series Stage Cenozoic Recent
Skeletal Morphology:	Complete skull and skeleton
Specimen Count:	1
Record Last Modified:	12 Jan 2015 13:01:00

Join me at 1400hr Eastern for a TwitterChat from @SILibraries, I'll be on @BioDivLibrary #Martha100

I'll be on the Smithsonian Libraries' sponsored TwitterChat on the Biodiversity Heritage Library Twitter account (@BioDivLibrary) later today (1400-1500hr Eastern) talking about the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the Smithsonian Libraries exhibition, Once There Were Billions. Also on will be the National Museum of Natural History's own ornithologist extraordinaire Helen James on the @NMNH account.

Buzzzzz! Bee digitization by the @SIxDIGI team at the Smithsonian's @NMNH #SIxRCPP

I took a trip up to the 6th floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History last week to take a look at the Digitization Program Office's rapid capture project for the honeybee collection of the museum. The team is making very good time on the project and what was going to just be a test project is on target to digitize all 46,000+ bees in the collection.

Below is Ken Rahaim showing how the bees are staged before getting digitized.

Here are a few snaps of the project in action.