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Parasites from an Endangered Deep-Water Shark and their link to Professor Sir E. Ray Lankester FRS, pioneer of Marine Conservation.

By ucwehlc, on 5 June 2023

The Grant Museum is currently closed this summer for some refurbishment works but we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection.

Today’s blog is by visiting researcher Dr Andrew McCarthy from Canterbury College, UK.

Initially this short piece was planned to be solely about the identification of specimens of an intestinal parasite of an endangered species of deep-water shark Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark, from the collections of the museum.

Black and white drawing of the bramble shark Echinorhinus brucus

Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark.
(Goode & Bean (1896) Oceanic Ichthyology. Public Domain via Wiki Commons)

 

However, by strange coincidence as will be explained, it is being written on the day that the United Nations in New York announced in its new global marine biodiversity conservation initiative “The High Seas Treaty”. Embracing almost two thirds of the World’s oceans that lie outside national boundaries the treaty provides a legal framework for the establishment of vast Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) to protect against loss of marine biodiversity. The coincidence is that the specimens under discussion here are thought, ultimately, to have their origin associated with the work of a British pioneer of marine conservation of well over one hundred years ago. He was namely Professor Sir Edwin Ray Lankester FRS, a past Director of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (1874-1890), Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London, and Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the University of Oxford. A larger-than-life figure, some believe him to be one of the inspirations for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger of “The Lost World”.

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Specimen of the Week 272: Jar of Horseshoe Crabs

By zcqsrti, on 30 December 2016

Doors open and in rushes a gust of cold air, shortly followed by a hurried flurry of wrapped up rosy faces. Here at the Grant Museum of Zoology, winter is a time of pressed noses on cabinet glass, and hungry eyes peering in at vivid sugary denizens of the cupboard. Come one, come all and experience Grant’s famous jelly moles, cotton candy wasp nests, liquorice joeys and of course the week’s special, all the way from America, the hard candy horseshoe crabs…

LDUCZ-J322 Horseshoe crabs

Jar of Horseshoe Crabs (Limulus polyphemus). LDUCZ-J322

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Specimen of the Week 267: The sea squirt

By Jack Ashby, on 25 November 2016

You can’t choose your family. This adage is undeniable when it comes to talking about our evolutionary history – we cannot choose to become unrelated to certain groups of animals. One of our closer relatives doesn’t look a lot like us. It is effectively a tough fluid-filled translucent bag sitting on the bottom of the sea, spending its time sucking in water and feeding on microscopic particles it finds there. This week’s specimen of the week is your cousin…

Sea squirt (with three parastic bivalvles molluscs in it). LDUCZ-Q329

Sea squirt (with three parastic bivalvles molluscs in it). LDUCZ-Q329

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Specimen of the Week 244: The historic wax flatworm

By Tannis Davidson, on 17 June 2016

LDUCZ-D44 Fasciola hepatica

LDUCZ-D44 Fasciola hepatica

Since its inception in 1828, the Grant Museum of Zoology collections have always been used for teaching. This continues in the present day and the Museum welcomes students from across UCL for a wide variety of specimen-based practicals, course work and research projects.

Today we maintain detailed lists of specimens which are used in classes but I’ve often wondered what the early object-based teaching practicals looked like and which specimens were used.

Fortunately, the Museum has some relevant archives which have identified an extraordinary specimen that had been used in teaching at UCL 130 years ago. It is not only one of the oldest specimens in the collection, but also one of the most beautiful.

Take a journey back in time with this week’s Specimen of the Week…

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Specimen of the Week: Week 171

By Mark Carnall, on 19 January 2015

Scary MonkeyThis week’s Specimen of the Week is one of those animals that is easier to talk about in terms of what it isn’t rather than what it is. In a previous blog post I’ve written about the fun with naming and language that happens when common names meet scientific classifications and how we end up with eels which aren’t eels, crabs which aren’t crabs and the brilliantly named flying lemurs which don’t fly and aren’t lemurs.

When it comes to fossil organisms there’s often even more fun to be had as it’s very rare that fossil groups are given common names so we end up having to refer to them by what living animals they aren’t or nearly are. This week’s specimen of the week is one of those organisms, I’ll do my best to try to explain what it is below.

This week’s specimen of the week is…

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What do all of our Curators have in Common? On the Origin of Our Specimens

By Jack Ashby, on 15 May 2014

Over the past few months we have been investigating what we can learn about where our specimens came from by researching the history of the Museum’s thirteen previous Curators. This “On the Origin of Our Specimens” series has uncovered much about our collections and the people that have worked here over the past 187 years. In this final post in the series I’m going to share some of the unexpected threads that kept reappearing through this time.

In answer to the question “What do all of our Curators have in common?” one thing that leaps out is a consistent failure to usefully identify which specimens they actually added to the collection. Professional documentation standards are a relatively new invention, and they have only recently been applied to our collection, mostly since we became a “proper museum” and not just a teaching collection and research repository.

Besides that, there are four topics that keep reappearing through time… (more…)

On the Origin of Our Specimens: The Minchin Years

By Emma-Louise Nicholls, on 6 March 2014

‘The Thirteen’

The collection of specimens, known since 1997 as the Grant Museum of Zoology, was started in 1827 by Robert E. Grant. Grant was the first professor of zoology at UCL when it opened, then called the University of London, and he stayed in post until his death in 1874. The collections have seen a total of 13 academics in the lineage of collections care throughout the 187 year history of the Grant Museum, from Robert E. Grant himself, through to our current Curator Mark Carnall.

Both Grant and many of his successors have expanded the collections according to their own interests, which makes for a fascinating historical account of the development of the Museums’ collections. This mini-series will look at each of The Thirteen in turn, starting with Grant himself, and giving examples where possible, of specimens that can be traced back to their time at UCL. Previous editions can be found here.

Number Five: Edward Alfred Minchin (1899-1906) (more…)

On the Origin of Our Specimens: The Weldon Years

By Emma-Louise Nicholls, on 27 February 2014

‘The Thirteen’

The collection of specimens, known since 1997 as the Grant Museum of Zoology, was started in 1827 by Robert E. Grant. Grant was the first professor of zoology at UCL when it opened, then called the University of London, and he stayed in post until his death in 1874. The collections have seen a total of 13 academics in the lineage of collections care throughout the 187 year history of the Grant Museum, from Robert E. Grant himself, through to our current Curator Mark Carnall.

Both Grant and many of his successors have expanded the collections according to their own interests, which makes for a fascinating historical account of the development of the Museums’ collections. This mini-series will look at each of The Thirteen in turn, starting with Grant himself, and giving examples where possible, of specimens that can be traced back to their time at UCL. Previous editions can be found here.

Number Four: Walter Frank Raphael Weldon (1891-1899) (more…)

On the Origin of Our Specimens: The Lankester Years

By Emma-Louise Nicholls, on 20 February 2014

‘The Thirteen’

The collection of specimens, known since 1997 as the Grant Museum of Zoology, was started in 1827 by Robert E. Grant. Grant was the first professor of zoology at UCL when it opened, then called the University of London, and he stayed in post until his death in 1874. The collections have seen a total of 13 academics in the lineage of collections care throughout the 187 year history of the Grant Museum, from Robert E. Grant himself, through to our current Curator Mark Carnall.

Both Grant and many of his successors have expanded the collections according to their own interests, which makes for a fascinating historical account of the development of the Museums’ collections. This mini-series will look at each of The Thirteen in turn, starting with Grant himself, and giving examples where possible, of specimens that can be traced back to their time at UCL. Previous editions can be found here.

Number Three: E. Ray Lankester (1875-1891) (more…)