Another month has come and gone, so like the perpetual progress of time this means another underwhelming fossil fish of the month is upon us. For the happy ignorant just joining us for the first time, this blog series examines an underwhelming fossil fish from the Grant Museum of Zoology collection on a monthly basis. CAUTION Reading #UFFotM has been known to cause; accidie, apathy, boredom, desolation, ennui, lack of enthusiasm, languor, malaise, melancholy, uninterestedness, unconcern and weariness. Cases of inspiration are extremely rare but please seek professional medical attention in these instances.

Following on from last week’s Specimen of the Week with a rockstar* connection, this month’s underwhelming fossil fish also has a famous connection, albeit in name only. Can you wait to find out what it is? I know I can. (more…)

It’s the end of June, which can mean one thing and one thing only. It’s time for another underwhelming fossil fish of the month brought to you from the Grant Museum of Zoology. I know, I know it seems like only the day before yesterday since we featured the last totally underwhelming fish fossil but time waits for no fish so we’re back once again. with the renegade master.

For the uninitiated there’s still time to back out. This blog series aims to look at fossil fish from the Grant Museum of Zoology and ask, why? Why did someone collect this? Why is it still in a museum? Who cares about this stuff and most importantly, is reading this a good use of my time?

No! No it is not dear reader but contemplating the dry and uninteresting world of a fossiliferous fish might just distract you enough from the knowledge that you and everyone you know is made of meat or offer some comfort to the inevitable fact that the heat death of the Universe will render everything we and descendent generations do utterly pointless.

I’ve stalled as much as I can, I’m afraid, it’s now time for this month’s underwhelming fossil fish to be unveiled. This is your last chance to get back to contemplating your inherently meaty nature. (more…)

GOOD NEWS ALERT. Thanks to the transfer of some fossil material from UCL Geology Collections to the Grant Museum of Zoology, the Museum is now definitively the unique home of underwhelming fossil fish on the UCL campus^TM. This transfer will keep the series going for a further 40 years on top of the next 70 years of underwhelming fossil fish of the month until the series is forced to examine an fossil fish that may be of interest.

For those of you unfamiliar with the monthly format, it works in exactly the same way as reality TV talent contest shows like the X Factor does. Except instead of people, there are only fossil fish and instead of searching for outstanding entertainment talent to slowly homogenise week on week into formulaic flash-in-the-pan popular music success we’re searching for indistinguishing blandness. Also, there aren’t judges or voting or live shows or broken dreams or insufferable presenters or music or six chair challenges or sad stories about dead grannies or guest appearances by pop stars who have an album or a tour to promote. Other than that, it is exactly the same.

This month to commemorate the influx of new old material into the museum, our talent scouts have picked out one of the new kids. Let me underwhelm you with it. Voting is now closed. (more…)

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the monthly union of a fossil fish and the acknowledgement of how underwhelming this fossil fish is, in holy blogimony, which is an honourable estate, that is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently and soberly.

This month’s fossil fish, is what we call in the palaeontological trade “a bit of alright”, that is, it is aesthetically rather on the ‘girl you gonna make me sweat’ end of the fossil fish scale. Don’t claim you haven’t been warned as this month’s underwhelming fossil fish is revealed before you as it will be in three, two, one… (more…)

It’s the end of March which means only one thing. Well it means many things but in the specific context of this monthly series that explores the underwhelmingest of fossil fish, which to be honest is most fossil fish, from the collection at the Grant Museum of Zoology it means its time for a new one.

But don’t confuse this perfunctory progress of the seconds, minutes, hours, days and months as an excuse for any kind of celebration. That’s not what we’re here for. Instead we are here to review a not-very-interesting fossil fish, unloved by all but the most…. no, just unloved by all. Why might we do this? Well as the French say, “C’est la fin des haricots”.

So without further ado, as the Germans say, “Wer weiß, warum die Gänse barfuß gehen”.

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Pinch, punch first (and only) of the underwhelming fossil fish of the month! For those who have made good life choices, until now, underwhelming fossil fish of the month is a monthly rummage through the drawers of the Grant Museum of Zoology, taking a look at life through the lens of an underwhelming fossil fish. Most you’ll have never heard of. Even more of them you wish you hadn’t. But someone, somewhere, sometime thought it would be important to collect, label and archive these underwhelming fossils for perpetuity.

This series questions if that was a useful thing to do. It also answers that: it probably wasn’t.

This month, we’ve got a particularly deceptive underwhelming fossil fish of the month for in all images of it, it looks much like an A-Level art student’s still life painting. We’ve been photographing it from almost every angle and the result is always the same. But don’t just take my word for it, famine your eyes on this… (more…)

There is much more to a natural history museum than meets the eye, and that’s mostly because relatively tiny proportions of their collections are on display. At the Grant Museum of Zoology we are lucky enough to have about 12% of our collection on display. That’s because we have a lot of tiny things in the Micrarium and our collection is relatively small, with 68,000 objects. While we REALLY like to cram as much in our cases as is sensible, these percentages are not realistic for many museums, whose collections run into the millions.

Limpets from South Georgia. LDUCZ-P879 Nacella concinna

The vast majority of specimens in natural history museums, ours included, were not intended for display, and that includes this week’s Specimen of the Week… (more…)

Welcome to the most amazing fossil fish ever discovered of the month. For those of you who don’t know it, which is nobody because everyone reads this blog, MAFFED is a monthly blog about everyone’s favourite fossil fish. We only focus on the best fossil fish here, which everyone is always talking about. It’s kind of a big thing if you’ve never read it. This series is most definitely nothing to do with underwhelming fossil fish of the month which nobody reads anyway**. This month we’ve got the best fossil fish ever discovered. I know, I know I say that every month but this time it is really true.

I hope you’re strapped into your seat because this is going to be one hell of a journey! You won’t need to read ANYTHING ELSE EVER AGAIN. (more…)

2016 was the most overwhelmingly underwhelming year of the last twelve months.

But it wasn’t the only thing that disappointed in month by month instalments. Yes, of course I’m talking about the Grant Museum of Zoology’s underwhelming fossil fish of the month blog series. The monthly foray into the drawers and drawers of underwhelming fossil fishes at the Grant Museum brings you the finest worst selection of least best fossil fish. We ask the tough questions such as why are these fossils here? Which way around is this one supposed to go and what does this label say. This is the blunt edge of science right here.

Of course, I’ve got an especially unspecial fossil fish to round off the year. Vast expense was spared to bring you just another underwhelming fossil fish to mark one step closer to your inevitable end. First up though, it’s END OF YEAR ROUND-UP FILLER CONTENT. (more…)

These are troubling times. Troubling and worrying times. Hope is an endangered species. You can feel it can’t you? Spin the wheel of woe, the only consolation possible is that you guessed correctly what destroyed the privileged civilisation as we know it. Was it climate in the end? Was it hatred? Was it intolerance? It doesn’t matter now of course. You’ll realise then what you suspect now, childish notions of justice winning out in the end were just that. There is no beacon of light on the horizon. In fact, the future is so pitch black in its nothingness that the next step could be the one into the abyss and you wouldn’t even know. So look to the horizon now, it’s petrifying isn’t it?

Petrification is also the process by which some organic matter exposed to minerals over a long period is turned into fossils. Welcome to this month’s underwhelming fossil fish of the month our monthly foray into the Grant Museum’s underwhelming fossil fish collection on a monthly basis. Month. (more…)