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. 

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This story was covered extensively by the press; read the article on FieldMuseum.org or check out additional coverage here: http://bit.ly/2LOJoHQ

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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. 

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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.

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

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.

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.

Kate Golembiewski is a PR and Science Communications Manager for the Field Museum. As a science writer tasked with bringing the Field's research to the press, her job isn't exactly 'behind-the-scenes' -- thousands of people have read her stories on the Museum's work -- but she's usually not the one in front of the camera.

Then, on a day that started like any other work day, she unexpectedly found herself in the role of a charismatic dinosaur expert for one of the biggest television networks in Japan.

Welcome to ExploreAStory, a science podcast by the makers of The Brain Scoop. Every other week we'll bring you a new story about the fantastic people who work behind-the-scenes at natural history museums, and the scientists who are making new and exciting discoveries about our world every day.