North American Mammals
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 3–12
- Subjects
- science (biology and life science, natural history)
- Provider
- Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
- Special requirements
- Macromedia Flash, Quicktime, Acrobat Reader
Legal
This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.
This site is based on The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals, by Don E. Wilson and Sue Ruff (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) and Mammals of North America, by Roland W. Kays and Don E. Wilson (Princeton University Press, 2002).
Educator's guide
This fully searchable database includes records for all of the mammals found from Central American countries through the Mexican states to the most northern Canadian provences. The students may limit their search to specific states or even major national park areas. The Search for species by latitude and longitude allows users to enter a latitude between 1 and 89 degrees North and a longitude between 5 and 179 degrees West. If you are unsure of the coordinates you may look them up on the site or use the Map Search to pinpoint the location of interest. Another option is to search by conservation status of species or other taxonomic groups or even to browse the mammalian family tree.
However you search, you may choose to gather some of all of the records you find into a printable field guide by checking the boxes next to the mammals you want to include. The records of each mammal include drawings, maps of habitat range, physical characteristics, and other details about the animal. All selected mammals are included in an attractive color field guide with room for students to make field notes at the bottom of each page.
Special collections on the North American Mammal site include Skull Images and Bones and Teeth Images. These image collections are searchable by keyword, order and family, or you may choose to browse the list of available species. If you prefer choose to conduct a "Visual Search" you will essentially browse thumbnails of the drawings of the available images. The Glossary defines relevant terms from adaptation to xerophyllic in context as the words appear or in an alphabetical list available from the navigation bar throughout the site.
