Galaxies of life are collecting dust in museums – digitizing microscope slides can uncover billions of fossils for natural history

Pollen, algae, insects, radiolarians – each unique microfossil holds clues to how Earth has changed over millions of years. Combining AI with digital scanners helps researchers piece it all together.

By: Ingrid C. Romero, Smithsonian Institution and Scott L. Wing, Smithsonian Institution, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: May 5, 2026

Words: 1,139

Last Updated: 2 months, 3 weeks ago

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By Ingrid C. Romero, Smithsonian Institution and Scott L. Wing, Smithsonian Institution

Approximately 148 million: That’s the number of specimens – including plants, animals, minerals and human artifacts – curators estimate are held in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. However, these estimates do not reflect the billions of tiny individual specimens contained on microscope slides – thin pieces of glass that fix objects in place for observation – each representing a record …

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