“Before you do anything else,” curator Chris Meyer said the minute I arrived at the National Museum of Natural History’s Invertebrate Zoology collection, “you have to vote for beauty.” He led me ...

Have you ever wondered about the true nature of cowrie shells? Where do they come from? Are they simply shells, or is there more to their story? You may have a vague understanding that cowries were ...

Cowries of the species Monetaria moneta and Monetaria annulus are marine gastropods native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean. Both species served historically as currency in West Africa. Archaeologists have ...