Mammalogist Tyrone Lavery had heard rumors of a giant coconut-eating rat living somewhere, elusively, in the Solomon Islands. But after five years of searching, all he had to show for it was a mysterious poop.  That is, until the giant rat fell from the sky.  ---  This story was covered extensively by the press; read the article on FieldMuseum.org or check out additional coverage here: http://bit.ly/2LOJoHQ --- This episode concludes Season 1 of ExploreAStory! I hope you've enjoyed listening so far. We're taking a break, but in the meantime I'd love to hear from you so feel free to send any feedback or suggestions to ExploreAStory at Fieldmuseum dot Org.  --- ExploreAStory is written and hosted by Emily Graslie, produced by Sheheryar Ahsan and Brandon Brungard, with music by Jason Weidner, and made with support from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

In which we discuss the peculiarities of shark reproduction.

This episode is part serious discussion about effective science communication, and part hilarious stories from Aimee's past life as a middle school teacher. An A+ mix.

Would you ever think that calling up a natural history museum and asking for their 'crusties' would be a legitimate scientific request? Well, it is, and that's what Dr. Molly McDonough does. She studies mammals and their DNA, sometimes pulling out the genetic code from animals that have been dead for more than a hundred years. For those of you (like me) who have ever scratched your head thinking 'what the heck is DNA anyway?,' Molly gives a GREAT explanation in this episode! Molly stands in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History gerbil collection, surrounded by specimens in drawers. photo c/o Molly McDonough --- Where are you in the world? Give us a listen! Record 30-45 seconds of your environment and email it to us at exploreastory(at)fieldmuseum(dot)org, with the subject line: "OK to share- EAS." Please include your name & location in the recording! By sending us the file you're giving us permission to use it at the end of a future episode or another Brain Scoop-related project, so thank you in advance. --- ExploreAStory is written and hosted by Emily Graslie, produced by Sheheryar Ahsan and Brandon Brungard, with music by Jason Weidner, and made with support from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

2/2. Check out last week's episode for the first half of the program!

Over a hundred people joined us for a meetup at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin back in January, and dozens shared personal stories of memorable moments spent in museums, in nature, and while exploring the world around them. Here's part 1 of 2 from that afternoon.

Because who doesn't want a story from someone who gets to live out every kid's dream of being a marine biologist on a beautiful tropical reef

Obama's ban on the trade and sale of ivory in 2016 was a major push to put an end to elephant poaching-- and it came with some secondhand consequences for certain hobby groups. Today we hear from Sarah Ebel, who is a staff attorney here at the Field Museum. Recently she was asked to talk about this new regulation at the annual Fan Association of North America meeting: fans of fans (seriously) whose work was about to become much more difficult, as many historic fans are created with ivory parts.

How do paleontologists know when they've found a new species? Idk, but thankfully I've got a few scientists on speed-dial that comes in pretty handy for such questions. We caught up with Gabriella Rossetto at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to hear about a particularly eventful field season, & Dr. Ken Angielczyk comes back to share his experience being one of only a handful of world experts studying Dicynodonts; tusked mammal-like animals that lived around 270 million years ago.

Dr. Ken Angielczyk is an Associate Curator at the Field Museum. While his research primarily focuses on a group of ancient mammal relatives called Dicynodonts, he's dabbled elsewhere in the fossil record, too, including that time a broken fossil turtle shell led to a new discovery, or another instance in which he nearly walked away from a site teeming with Asilisaurus-- one of the oldest dinosaurs ever discovered. Today's episode explores the opportunities we find when mistakes are (nearly) made.