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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: 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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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…)