San Diego, CA
The Nat museum brings fossils back to life at new Paleo Center
While the word “fossils” may have once once conjured images of elderly, nearsighted scientists toiling in silence in dank, dark basements, San Diego’s Natural History Museum is breathing new life into its collection with the addition of a $5.1 million Paleo Center that, yes, is downstairs and opens to the public on Friday.
The story of Amazement in the Basement, as “the Nat” has coined the exhibit, began 150 years ago when the museum was founded and continues today with curated highlights in the new Tom Deméré Paleontology Center, which finds fresh ways to connect San Diego with its antediluvian past.
“It’s the first time in our museum’s history that we’ve been able to combine both an exhibit and a real, active lab and collection space, so visitors will be able to not only explore an exhibit that displays the breadth and diversity of our collection, but they’ll be able to see paleontologists working in action and actually interact with them,” Abi Karkenny, director of exhibits at the Nat, told NBC 7 this week.
So, do you want to talk to a scientist while she makes a “cradle’ for the 120,000-year-old bison dug up in 2020 when workers paved the parking lot at Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley? That’s why the windows will usually be open in the research lab.
“It’s really the first time we’ve been able to bring visitors so close to the science that happens here, typically behind the scenes,” Karkenny said, adding, “I think the scientists are excited. You know, [they’re] always wanting to share their work with the public, they’re so passionate about what they do.”
Scientists working with a 120,000-year-old bison dug up in 2020 when workers paved the parking lot at Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley. Photo by Eric S. Page
And the specimens they’re working on, of course, will be constantly changing as they complete the tasks of preservation.
“[The] highlights of our Paleo Collection are often the things that were found right here in San Diego,” Karkenny said. “People are always fascinated to learn that so many of our fossils were found right here, right where we live and work and play. So, for example, we have … shells on display here that were found right under the museum while it was being constructed. And so that’s always mind-blowing for people: to find out that we live in such a fossil-rich area of the United States.”
Want to know what kind of fossils were dug up in Chula Vista? Carlsbad? Balboa Park? Well, in Mission Hills, for example, shark’s teeth and the bones of marine animals that were found are about 3.5 million years old. Just check out an exhibit case with drawers holding dozens of treasures from deep in the millennia. “See what’s in our drawers,” is how they put it.
A wall-size map of Southern California with mounted jewel cases containing fossils educates the young and the old by linking the ancient animals to where they were dug up in downtown San Diego (a half-million year old mammoth tooth and toe), Spring Valley (43 million-year-old crab), Mira Mesa (a squid-like animal; about 144 million years old) and Oceanside, where a mastodon leg bone from the Pleistocene Epoch 120,000 years ago was found.
The Paleo Center was conceived of just seven short years ago, though, back when the collection was housed both on site as well as at external storage facilities. Construction in Balboa Park, however, began in earnest in 2022. And if the site seems a bit industrial in design, that’s intentional.
“It’s meant to be a peek behind the curtain of our work,” Karkenny said, “and so much of the exhibit is inspired by what our collections spaces look like, both, you know, our warehouses that we used to have with super tall, 16-foot-high shelves full of specimens to the compactors that you see behind the scenes where you can roll the cabinets aside and see thousands of fossils, some as big as a boulder, but some as tiny as a grain of sand.”
A wall-size map of Southern California with mounted jewel cases containing fossils educates the young and the old by linking the ancient animals to where they were dug up around San Diego County. Photo by Eric S. Page
Two of those towering orang shelves made the leap to the Nat, where they now hold everything from a stuffed mountain lion to the fossil of a whale skull. Remarkably, the 1.5 million specimens are across the hall, behind glass, visible to visitors and just steps away from the paleontologists working in the lab.
Although the exhibit is called the Paleo Center, it’s about more than just dinosaurs. Paleontology is, technically, the study of ancient life, especially from fossils.
“And so this was really created as a space to bring all the fossils together underground again, if you will, in one space and one home, but we also want visitors to know about all of the work being done to care for, study, protect fossils,” Karkenny said. “It’s not just for paleontology. The San Diego Natural History Museum does that work for all kinds of things: frogs, beetles, birds — an amazing diversity of specimens.”
Admission to the museum is $24 for adults — pro tip: buy online for $21.99 online — OR, grownups only have to fork over 12 bucks on Friday nights this summer, when they can take advantage of the Nat at Night to see the museum AND enjoy an adult beverage on the outdoor rooftop terrace. Kids 3-17? They’re $14 at the door daytime (or $12.99 on the website).
Karepango, the colorful and unapologetic brand that aims to bring a smile in the most unexpected time, is coming to Comic-Con to spread joy, and give attendees the chance to show the world they are imperfect, yet still proud.
Find them at booth #5034, located in the Hall G area of the convention center, and will have dozens of their classic bestsellers, recent products and even a brand new exclusive (and very limited) shirt.
All purchases will receive free gifts, with an extra special gift for purchases over $100.
All clothing is available in sizes XS through 2XL, but in limited quantities per size.
Let’s get shopping:
Have A Good Day Shirts – $48
Limited to 75 pieces
Purple or brown with front and back printing
100% Cotton Knit Sweaters – $88
Oversized and pre-shrunk
100% Cotton T-Shirts – $48
Various Designs
Oversized and pre-shrunk
Tote Bags, Plush Bags, Puffy Bags, IRO Bags, All Sorts of Bags – $28-$45
Various designs
Drink Holders, Mesh Pouches, Nylon Pouches, Headbands, Blind Box Toys, Plush Trinkets – $15-$25
Various designs
Caps, Bucket Hats, Plush Hats, Beanies – $28-$30
Various designs
Bags, Plush, Rugs, Scarves – $50-$80
Various designs
Stickers, Socks, Pins, Air Fresheners – $4-$15
Various designs
Seek and ye shall find:
Travel back more than 250 million years with PBS Eons during a special San Diego Comic-Con preview screening of Eons: Life and Death on Pangea before the series officially premieres.
On Saturday, July 25 at 10am, attendees can watch the first episode of the new four-part miniseries, which explores the Permian Period and the “Great Dying,” Earth’s largest known mass extinction event that wiped out more than 80% of all species.
Following the screening, hosts Gabriel-Philip Santos and Michelle Barboza-Ramirez, along with series writer Farhan Mitha, will take fans behind the scenes of the production and stick around for a Q&A about bringing this prehistoric world to life.
San Diego, CA
Gibraltar ushers in a new era as British territory’s border fence with Spain is removed
MADRID (AP) — Thousands of people who travel every day between the southern tip of Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar will no longer have to cross a physical border, beginning on Wednesday.
The official opening at midnight on Tuesday, after a border fence was removed, allows a new freedom of movement under a historic treaty between the European Union and the United Kingdom. It came after years of post-Brexit wrangling.
The contested British Overseas Territory of 38,000 people is perched at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, in a strategic location mere miles from Morocco where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea.
Soon after midnight, crowds crossed freely between Spain’s La Línea de Concepción and Gibraltar in both directions. Many wore Spanish soccer jerseys after Spain’s victory against France in the World Cup semifinal on Tuesday, adding to the celebratory mood.
“What you feel here is the brotherhood between the two people,” Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Spanish broadcaster RTVE.
A deal that took years to realize
When Britain left the EU in 2020, the relationship between Gibraltar and the bloc had been left unresolved.
Previous talks on a deal to ensure people and goods could keep flowing across the border had made halting progress. In 2025, the EU and U.K. announced an agreement on those issues, with the two sides and Gibraltar’s government signing a treaty Tuesday that eases border crossings.
The U.K.’s Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty said Tuesday that the agreement secured Gibraltar’s long-term economic future and interests.
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade representative, praised the agreement, too.
“It has taken four years of patient, complex negotiation, but the outcome speaks for itself,” Šefčovič said. “It is a very special feeling to see a fence come down.”
Without a deal, Gibraltar could have a faced a hard land border with full passport checks, posing economic risks for the territory deeply dependent on some 15,000 Spaniards — almost half Gibraltar’s workforce — who cross the frontier every day for work.
Mendez Segura, 51, crossed into Gibraltar from Spain on Wednesday for work, unused to the newfound freedom of movement.
“I’ve been crossing over and working in Gibraltar all my life with my identity card,” the home care worker said. “I know you’ll be able to cross without it, but it’s just what I’m used to.”
Leisure visits by people crossing both sides of the border would have been affected, too.
“People who are visiting family in Spain, or whose Spanish family is visiting them in Gibraltar. Children who are going to football matches and extracurricular activities, either in Spain or in Gibraltar. They will be able to do that without having to worry about frontier queues,” Picardo told The Associated Press in an interview.
The deal in effect brings the territory into the EU’s Schengen free travel area. At Gibraltar’s airport and port, entry and exit checks will be conducted by both U.K. and Spanish border officials. The arrangement is similar to what’s in place at Eurostar train stations in London and Paris, where both British and French officials check passports.
Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in 1713, but Spain has maintained its sovereignty claim ever since. Relations between the two countries on the issue of Gibraltar have had their ups and downs over the centuries. The treaty that removed the border fence does not resolve the territory’s contested status.
In Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, 96% of voters in the Rock, as the territory is popularly known in English, supported remaining in the EU.
Travelers to Gibraltar from countries outside the Schengen Area, including the U.K., will have to contend with the EU Entry-Exit System, or EES, which was rolled out in Europe in April and replaced passport stamps with biometric data collected through photographs and digital fingerprints.
Facial recognition cameras at the Rock
With the border fence gone, Gibraltar officials have set up live facial recognition cameras at entry points and throughout the territory.
Chief Minister Picardo said the territory will have many more CCTV cameras and that it has increased its police presence as well as resources for customs and Coast Guard agencies.
“The fortress has become a digital fortress now,” Picardo said.
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