It started with a tiny horse. The tiniest horse you’ve never seen. Probably because it died out 50 billion years ago and was actually a living fossil which pointed the way to a valley full of bloodthirsty dinosaurs ready to break out into the real world at the first sign of human intervention.

No, this wasn’t the latest breakthrough in genetic engineering; it was in fact the penultimate event in the Grant Museum’s Silly Season and the latest film to be given the “on the Big Screen” treatment.

Introduced by Dr Joe Cain (UCL Science and Technology Studies), The Valley of Gwangi is a moralistic tale of what happens when greed gets the better of us and makes us deaf to the warnings of slightly crazy, blind gypsy ladies and sends us off looking for things which shouldn’t exist. Think Jurassic Park with cowboys.

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Last night a contingent from UCL including colleagues from Museums and Public Engagement, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and Heritage Without Borders headed down to the illustrious premises of 8 Northumberland for the 10th Anniversary Museums and Heritage Awards.

In total three UCL projects had been shortlisted; the move of the Grant Museum for Project on A Limited Budget, the Grant Museum’s QRator project for Innovations and Heritage Without Borders for The International Award. Did we bring home the silver (glass)? Well from the title of this post you can gather we did but you’ll have to hit the jump to find out more..

We won the Innovations award for QRator: Visitor Participation Through Social Interpretation. Here’s what the award looks like, complete with our grubby finger prints from last night. Some of them may even be comedienne and broadcaster Sue Perkins’ who presented the award.

There’s a whole raft of people who need thanking and who were instrumental in the QRator project. In no order they are: Andrew Hudson-Smith and the original team behind Tales of Things from UCL Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis, Steven Gray from CASA who developed the QRator app and has been our 24/7 helpdesk ever since, Claire Ross from UCL Digital Humanities who worked with me originally in trialling QR codes in the Grant Museum and who has been instrumental in researching, supporting and spreading QRator, Melissa Terras and Claire Warwick also from Digital Humanities who have given continuous feedback on the project as well as share the burden of the numerous published papers on the project, Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads, Grant Museum Manager Jack Ashby who writes the content and designs the displays for QRator, Grant Museum colleagues Emma-Louise Nicholls and Simon Jackson who moderate the content day in and day out, UCL Public Engagement Unit for their funding and support of the project, Sally MacDonald Director of UCL Museums and Public Engagement who has been a huge driving force behind the project and key to realising it and of course the visitors of the Grant Museum who interact with QRator and interpret the Grant collections. Without them this project would literally be nothing.

Read more of Mark Carnall’s entry on the UCL Museums & Collections Blog

UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology has launched a new exhibition, Buried on Campus, exploring the surprising find of more than 7,000 bone fragments in the UCL quad.

In March 2010, unsuspecting construction workers, who were digging a trench to enter the Chadwick Building basement, discovered a huge array of bones. The find shocked many: who or what did the bones belong to? When were they buried? And why were they buried in the quad of all places?

Initially, the Metropolitan Police were called in to investigate, who then brought in UCL’s forensic anatomist Dr Wendy Birch for further advice. Through a thorough (and ongoing) investigation, Dr Birch found that the bones comprised 84 individual humans and a variety of animals and, presumably to the relief of many, there was no sign of foul play.

Later, a seven-day excavation of the area ultimately led to a massive 7,394 fragments being found, and Dr Birch and UCL forensic anthropologist Christine King are still working on reconstructing and analysing these.

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What better way to round off the end of term than with a nice movie night? How about a nice, free movie night?

I’m a recent convert to the ‘On the Big Screen’ events, but the three I’ve been to have all been fantastic. Organised by Jack Ashby from the UCL Grant Museum, and introduced by Dr. Joe Cain from UCL Science & Technology Studies, these film nights draw in a big crowd of regulars, who pack out one of the lecture theatres to enjoy some retro cinema.

This last instalment brought the 1953 Harryhausen classic ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’ to Bloomsbury.

As per usual, the ever-knowledgable Dr Cain provided an entertaining breakdown of the film to come, giving the audience pointers to look out for and generally fleshing out some details required for deeper appreciation.

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