Big seeds produced by many tropical trees were probably once ingested and then defecated whole by huge mammals called gomphotheres that dispersed the seeds over large distances. But gomphotheres were probably hunted to extinction more than 10,000 years ago. So why aren't large-seeded plants also extinct? A new report suggests that rodents may have taken over the seed dispersal role of gomphotheres.

Even the world's largest snake, Titanoboa, could probably not have swallowed this new, very round fossil turtle species from Colombia.

Population estimates for the Amazon basin just before Europeans arrived range from 2 to 10 million people. A new reconstruction of Amazonian prehistory by Smithsonian scientist Dolores R. Piperno and colleagues suggests that large areas of western Amazonia were sparsely inhabited. This clashes with the belief that most of Amazonia, including forests far removed from major rivers, was heavily occupied and modified. See this publication in the June 15 issue of Science.

Pooling funds and putting their heads together, more than 70 scientists from 9 institutions including the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, sequenced the entire genome of the butterfly genus Heliconius, a brightly colored favorite of collectors and scientists since the Victorian era. Their results are published in the prestigious journal, Nature.

From Mar. 4-10, Eldredge Bermingham, Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and staff scientist Hector Guzman joined Mission Blue, founded by Sylvia Earle, oceanographer and environmental advocate, to survey the fauna of Panama's Hannibal Bank and environs.

Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and University of Costa Rica asked why spiders do not stick to their own sticky webs. Repeating old, widely quoted but poorly documented studies with modern equipment and techniques, they discovered that spiders' legs are protected by a covering of branching hairs and by a non-stick chemical coating and that they modify their behavior to avoid getting stuck.