Months? Try 179 years. The Smithsonian was officially created on this day in 1846. One of the first things on the to-do list? Construct a building! The 1850 glass lantern slide at the end of this video is the earliest-known photo of our Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle, and the only image we have of it under construction. 📷: Smithsonian Libraries and Archives | Smithsonian

Finding new artifacts in the field is amazing, but what happens after the digging is done? Get an inside look at how archaeologists clean and sort their discoveries, with the volunteers of our Smithsonian Environmental Archaeology Lab, or “SEAL” team. These artifacts came from the Lee-Pullen House in Jerusalem Mill, a historic mill village in Maryland. The artifacts ranged from glass, ceramics, metal, marbles, buttons, pipe stems, animal bones and even a scrap of newspaper! To learn more about #

Hidden below the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, the paleobiology collections hold nearly 40 million fossils and sediment samples. Included in the collections are some of the oldest fossils from Hatcher, a triceratops that has been displayed at the museum since 1905. Read more: http://wapo.st/2hyrXB0 | Washington Post

With the help of Smithsonian Mass Digitization, we’re hard at work making our fossils available to the international scientific community. Because every day should feel like #FossilFriday! | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History