MARCH 2012 - The seal stone was most likely found during World War II by soldiers stationed on a remote Aleutian Island transformed by a military looking to protect its frontier. But objects found on federal land belong to the federal government, which is how the artifact joined the archaeology collection at the UA Museum of the North. Read more here.

FEBRUARY 2012 - The University of Alaska Museum of the North has installed a new pipeline super pig on its grounds. A pig is a device inserted into a pipeline to clean, inspect, and perform other special duties.This pig, donated to the museum’s ethnology and history collection by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, replaces one donated in 1984. Read more here.

JANUARY 2012 - Thirty years after the first community members were trained to lead school children on tours of the museum's collections and exhibits, the program is still going strong. More than 386 people have become docents and tens of thousands of students have been captivated by the mysteries of the museum. Read more here.

DECEMBER 2011 - A large collection of archaeological artifacts has returned to Alaska, nearly 60 years after they were excavated near Point Barrow. The Birnirk collection represents a prehistoric Eskimo culture dating back to 500 AD. The collection has tremendous research significance and is an exciting addition to the museum's archaeology collection. Read more here.

NOVEMBER 2011 - Reproductions of paintings created during a 1950s retreat to the Brooks Range have been donated to the community of Anaktuvuk Pass. The originals will be housed at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, thanks to collaboration between the artist's family and the museum's fine arts curator. Read more here.

OCTOBER 2011 - Herbarium collection manager Jordan Metzgar is working on his Ph.D. at UAF, focusing on the parsley fern (Cryptogramma). He’s reconstructing the migration patterns of two Alaskan species (C. acrostichoides, the American parsley fern, and C. sitchensis, the Sitka parsley fern) after the last ice age, work that requires detailed molecular data. More here ...

SEPTEMBER 2011 - An 1841 Russian blockhouse is again sitting tall on the grounds of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. The roof was removed from the Kolmakovsky blockhouse in 2006 due to questions of structural stability and safety. In December of 2009, the National Park Service awarded the museum $75,000 to preserve the Kolmakovsky collection. More here...

AUGUST 2011 - A team of archaeologists and artists expected to find the prehistoric boulders adorned with petroglyphs that were previously discovered in the Noatak National Preserve when they returned to the site this summer. They didn't know they would make a new discovery during small-scale excavations: four decorated clay disks that appear to be the first of their kind in Alaska. More here...

JULY 2011 - Sometimes finding a fossil is as easy as a walk on the beach. That’s what happened in May when a member of a geological team working in Southeast Alaska chanced upon a find during an extremely low tide. Something caught team member Eugene Primaky’s eye. “I instantly thought 'fish'.” The fish turned out to be a fossil of a prehistoric marine reptile called a thalattosaur. It may be the most complete fossil of its kind found in North America. More here...

JUNE 2011 -  Humans have long had a thing for obsidian. Archaeologists can examine obsidian artifacts to measure nine elements that make up a fingerprint to match with its origin. Often the obsidian tool had been carried hundreds of miles from its source. Museum staff recently examined obsidian artifacts curated at the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak to map their sources. More here...

MAY 2011 - Early humans relied only on the power generated by their own bodies: energy in the form of food. Then they discovered fire. Suddenly, our ancestors were able to access the energy stored over decades, not just days or months, and transform it into heat and light. That was the beginning of the balancing act humans play between the need for power and the forms of available energy. More here...

APRIL 2011 - After Marlene Bond watched the movie An Inconvenient Truth, the Randy Smith middle schooler grew curious about the phenomena of global warming. Alaska is on the front line of research, with scientists measuring symptoms like melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and the migration of shrubs north into the tundra, so she turned to the museum for her questions. More here...

MARCH 2011 - A recent donation to the University of Alaska Museum of the North’s ethnology collection chronicles a family’s connection to the village of Point Hope back to the early part of last century. The items were donated by Steve Thomas, the former host of PBS' This Old House. His grandfather, the Rev. William Thomas, served as a missionary from 1914 to 1926 in Point Hope, where he purchased or received the pieces as gifts. More here...

FEBRUARY 2011 - When the music festival Tune In opened in New York City, all ears – and eyes – were on composer John Luther Adams. The audience heard his work “Inuksuit” performed indoors and in New York for the first time. At the same event, the film Strange and Sacred Noise by Leonard Kamerling, curator of film at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, premiered. More here...