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Mineralogy
January 11th, 2011
Marvel in the beauty and splendor of gemstones in The Field Museum’s newly renovated Grainger Hall of Gems.
November 08th, 2012
Join Dr. Philipp Heck and his team at the Field Museum's Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies in their quest for presolar grains - cosmic stardust older than our Solar System!
May 11th, 2011
About 470 million years ago – in a time period called Ordovician – the parent asteroid of one of the L chondrites, one of the most common meteorite types, was disrupted in a collision with another body. This event led to a subsequent bombardment of Earth with collisional debris for at least 10 million years. This finding is reported in a recent study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters by Field Museum scientists Dr. Birger Schmitz (Research Associate), Robert A. Pritzker Assistant Curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies Dr. Philipp Heck, and an international team of coauthor
January 12th, 2011
The current research focus at the Center is on presolar grains to understand our parent stars and the history of our Galaxy, and on the delivery history of extraterrestrial matter to Earth through the study of fossil meteorites and micrometeorites found in sediments, and terrestrial impact craters. We also study extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth by the NASA mission Stardust.
November 09th, 2010
The Department of Geology maintains a primary focus on paleontological research, with curators covering fossil mammals, fossil fish, fossil reptiles and amphibians, and fossil invertebrates. Geology department paleontologists study the evolution of the Earth and its biota through time and space. The study of meteoritics has been and continues to be the department's other major research area.