Conjure up in your mind, if you will, a natural history museum and you’ll probably be picturing skeletons, taxidermied animals and maybe specimens preserved in fluid. Recently, I spent some time with Rosina Down, the curator before the curator before me, having a look at some of the more unusual specimens we have here that were prepared on site at UCL in the 1980s.

Freeze dried mouse

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As with most people, I have a number of different passions. Be it, palaeontology/zoology, or films, or board games, or buying new socks, I enjoy a great many things and dedicate a serious amount of time to each. Most time of course goes to palaeontology/zoology, in so much as I am in fact paid to do that for a living (WAHOOOO). But sometimes I feel as though I may have been neglecting an area and get the urge to go back to the roots of a hobby and give it a little TLC. When I think back to the roots of palaeontology, being the single most continuous love in my life, I remember writing an essay ‘back in the day’ on a particular fossil animal, of which we have a fantastic reconstruction in the Museum. It sits nonchalantly and unassuming in a corner but when you hear a little about it, I think you’ll get the urge to make a special journey. This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

The decision for this week’s specimen of the week was an exciting adventure through the paths of taxonomic mishaps and similar looking un(closely)related animals. I chose (actually the curator suggested) a particular species and so off I went to find what specimens we had of said creature. Confusingly, the two specimens I found looked not a great deal alike (upon close inspection with the eye and thought process of a super duper scientist such as myself. Uh hum.) A wee while of interwebbing later I came to an interesting conclusion. So excited was I, by the chance to do real live comparative anatomy, that I wanted to share the experience with you. Therefore, this week you get TWO specimens. Oh yes. This week’s Specimens of the Week are… (more…)

As chance would have it at the same time as we received research interest from the Royal College of Art, colleague Dr Zerina Johanson, researcher in the Earth Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum, had also contacted me about our paddlefish specimens. We have less than a dozen paddlefish specimens in the Grant Museum (fish is the family Polyodontidae, represented today by only two species the American paddlefish Polyodon spathula and the possibly-extinct Chinese paddlefish Psephurus gladius) and fortunately, one of these specimens, matched the specifications for research (in this article I wrote about how ‘usable’ specimens dwindle to tens from thousands depending on the type of research).

So for the second time in May I was on bodyguard duty to escort one of our specimens down to South Kensington for some scanning, this time for SCIENCE!

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I am surrounded by 68,000 specimens on a regular basis and feel as though I have a personal relationship with the vast majority of them. I care for the specimens, as any Museum Assistant would, like I knew the animal whilst it was alive, loved it, nurtured it when it was sick, laughed with it, cried with it, and now, in it’s death, I am it’s keeper whilst it sleeps for eternity.

When you have so many to care for however, it is fascinating to see them through the fresh eyes of someone new to the Museum, or are forming the relationship described above, for the first time. So when I asked a photographer doing a shoot in the Museum recently, out of the specimens he had photographed that day, which was his favourite, his response surprised me. It was not the cute, the cuddly, the impressively large, or notably rare. This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

My colleague Nick Booth has already introduced the Octagon Gallery that hopefully a lot of UCL staff and students have noticed on their way from one side of campus to another. In addition to the ‘big egg’ a number of objects from the Grant Museum can be seen on display (including another big egg, a model of an elephant bird egg) but as with most exhibitions there were a lot of objects that for one reason or another didn’t make the cut.

A number of months ago one of the Mellon Fellow curators of the Model Translation exhibition, Antony Hudek, came by the museum and asked if we would loan one of our Blaschka glass models to the exhibition. I mustered my best impression of a dodgy second-hand car salesman and informed him that if it was models he wanted, we’ve got hundreds. We then spent the rest of the afternoon going through the model collections at the Grant Museum. Originally there were 30 or so objects on the long list which had to be whittled down for the exhibition. Here’s some of the objects that didn’t end up in the exhibition. (more…)

I found this… is a new mini-installation by the entrance to the Museum. In each of the six cabinets one member of our team has selected one object which they have uncovered something new about. Today…

The great white shark jaws

People often ask where our specimens came from. The truth for some of the oldest objects is we don’t know. However, whoever first acquired this specimen left clues.

During my Ph.D on sharks I learnt that large species attack using the front right, or front left of the jaw. This specimen has empty pits where two teeth are missing from this primary biting location. The teeth either side are intact, showing the damage was caused by something thin: fishing line. The damage is isolated to the top jaw, suggesting the shark tried to get away by diving rather than rolling.

It is sad to think of how this animal died. (more…)

Very obviously science.

Before I start, just to be clear, I’m not one of those scientists who hates art, or is snobbish about the semi-defined/awe-and-wonder/expressive/cheeky-subversion/I-don’t-care-if-the-viewer-doesn’t-understand kind of thing that some artists get up to. Not at all. I think it’s great. In fact, I work hard to incorporate a lot of art into programmes at the Grant Museum.

Over the last couple of weeks two of the city’s biggest block-busters finished – Animal Inside Out at the Natural History Museum and Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern. They were both excellent.

Much has been written about the cross-over between art and natural history, particularly when traditional scientific museum practices are replicated in art. What makes one art and one science?
The obvious answers relate to the intentions of the artist and the interpretations of the viewer. (more…)

Every Monday I chose my Specimen of the Week with the care and attention of a model kit expert applying the last decal. We have 4000+ specimens on display and every week I get to draw your attention to just one. The specimen may be chosen for its unusual preservation state, because it represents an intriguing species hanging off the branch of little heard of creatures on the evolutionary tree, or because the specimen featured in my life recently for some reason and endeared itself to me. The last in the list has been the most popular reason to date. This week I was perusing the shelves for specimens to use in a student practical and keeping a sharp eye for the subject of the next Specimen of the Week, when a friend popped in to say ‘hello and how do you do’ to his adopted flying frog. Having exhausted conversation with the largely inanimate amphibian he turned his attention to me and my Specimen of the Week. The subsequent random tangents of conversation resulted in him standing straight, with one arm out pointing, his eyes closed, and spinning in circles as small children ducked out of the way whilst he waited for me to shout ‘STOP’. The next Specimen of the Week lay beyond his finger in the direction to which he pointed. We immediately embarked on a journey of discovery. The first specimen we came across was the dugong, at which point it was decided by unanimous vote that his finger had in fact been pointing over that specimen. Next in line of sight was the whale case, comprising multiple bits and bobs of various parts of the anatomy of several whale species. As we edged closer, wondering what the SotW would turn out to be, we saw it. On the same table as the dugong, in front of the whale case, and clearly what the finger had been trying to tell us it lay unassuming it it’s perspex box. ‘Ah haaaaaaaaa’ I declared aloud, ‘this week’s Specimen of the Week is…’ (more…)

My name is Emma and I like cookies. I like the giant ones that you have to hold with all your fingers on one hand otherwise the sheer weight of the monstrous chocolatey beast will break it in half as the apex descends towards the centre of the earth through a jealous fit of gravity. I like the soft chewy ones (it’s a treat, my jaw doesn’t want to work hard) and ones with large chunks of chocolate in them that melt as you swish the delectable triple chocolate cookie-ness around in your mouth. It seems to me that all ills can be forgiven when you’re standing staring at a giant cookie that’s yours all yours, just miliseconds from being devoured. I also like sharks. Big ones, small ones, bitey ones, sucky ones (as in ones that suck in their prey, not ones that ‘suck’, which as we all know- sharks do not), grinding ones, filter-feeding ones. They come in blue, yellow, grey, black, silver, with stripes, with spots, with stripes that turn into spots. Sharks just rock. Which do I prefer, sharks or cookies? What about sharks that make cookies? That would be a phenomenon so mind-blowingly fantastic that surely choirs of angels would descend amidst gold auras to sing in their presence. If only such a thing existed. WELL. Hold on to your seats my friends, this week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)