More Than a Dodo

Priceless and Primordial

Cataloguing the Brasier Collection

In 2021, the Museum was grateful to host PhD students Sarah Skeels and Euan Furness on research internships. Together, Sarah and Euan made a significant contribution to the cataloguing of the Brasier Collection — a remarkable assembly of fossils and rocks donated to the Museum by the late Professor Martin Brasier. Here, Sarah and Euan recount their experiences inventorying this priceless collection of early lifeforms.

Sarah Skeels is a DPhil Student in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

My short internship at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History came at a transitional point in my research career, starting a few days after submitting my PhD thesis. By training, I am a Zoologist, and my PhD thesis is on the electrosensing abilities of weakly electric fish. However, I have had an interest in Palaeontology for a long time, having studied Geology as part of my undergraduate degree. As such, the internship provided me with a unique opportunity to reflect on a subject I had studied many years before, whilst also developing new academic research skills.

The goal of my internship was to improve the inventory of the microfossils held in The Brasier Collection and to photograph some of these specimens, all in the hopes of increasing the utility of the collection to students, researchers, and hobbyists alike.

*Obtusoconus*, a fossilised mollusc from Iran, is less than 0.5mm in width. The specimen has been gold-coated in preparation for scanning electron microscopy. Brasier Collection, Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

**A collection of Siphogonuchites, small shelly fossil organisms, found in Mongolia.** Brasier Collection, Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The Brasier Collection is rich in microfossils — small fossils that can only properly be inspected with either a light or electron microscope. Those stored in the Collection represent the fragmentary remains of a diverse array of animal groups that lived in the Cambrian, an important period in the Earth’s history when animal life diversified hugely, giving rise to many of the modern phyla that we know and love. The microfossils I examined came from a number of localities across the globe, including Maidiping in China and Valiabad in Iran. The specimens are exquisite in detail, which makes it difficult to believe that they are hundreds of millions of years old.

These fossils are of huge importance, helping us to understand the emergence of early animal life, and its evolution into all of the wonderful forms that exist today. The fossils are also useful because they can serve as markers of the age of different rock forms. By helping to improve the way these specimens are catalogued, I like to think that I am contributing to the preservation of Professor Brasier’s legacy. The whole experience was incredibly rewarding, and I can’t wait to see what new discoveries are made by those who study this unique set of fossils.

Euan Furness is a PhD student at Imperial College London

Oxford University Museum of Natural History has a range of objects on display to the public, but a lot of the curatorial work of the Museum goes on behind the scenes, conserving and managing objects that never come into public view. Collection specimens often don’t look like much, but they can be the most valuable objects to researchers within and outside the Museum. While there are a few visually striking pieces in the Brasier Collection, the humble appearance of most of the Brasier specimens belies their importance.

Left: A photo of Professor Brasier (bottom right) and friends, found in the Collection. Middle: Euan cataloguing in the Hooke basement. Right: An unusually well-preserved archaeocyathid (extinct sponge) from the Cambrian of Australia. Photo by Euan Furness.

The Brasier Collection came to the Museum in bits and pieces from the Oxford University Department of Earth Sciences, with the last of the specimens arriving in September 2021. The Museum therefore needed to determine exactly what they had received before they could decide how to make the best use of it. This meant searching through boxes and drawers behind the scenes and pulling together as much information as possible about the new objects: dates and locations of collection, identity, geological context, and the like. Only then could the more interesting specimens be integrated with the existing collections in the drawers of the Museum’s Palaeozoic Room.

Owing to Professor Brasier’s research interests, the addition of the Brasier Collection to the Museum’s catalogue more than doubled the volume of Precambrian material in its drawers. With that in mind, it was finally time for the Precambrian to be given a set of cabinets to call its own. This seems only fair, given that the Precambrian was not only a fascinating period in the Earth’s history but also the longest!

Having sorted through the new Brasier Collection at length, I think it’s not unreasonable to hope that the unique array of objects it adds to the Museum’s collections will facilitate a great deal of research in the future. For that, we must thank Martin for his generosity.

Crunchy on the outside

Our blog for and by young entomologists

Blog post by Rodger Caseby – HOPE for the Future Learning Officer

By the end of 2022, the Museum’s HOPE project will have rehoused and documented over one million British insects, restored our historic Westwood Room to create a new multi-purpose public space, and designed and delivered a wide-reaching learning and community programme.

The Crunchy on the outside blog is an exciting part of this community programme, aimed at 10–14 year-olds. For and by young entomologists, we’re not actually asking anyone to sink their teeth into a crispy exoskeleton! Instead, we are keen for young people to get involved in the HOPE project and the fascinating six-legged world of insects.

We publish posts each Monday at crunchyontheoutside.com in a cycle of four themes:

Natural World posts highlight amazing insects, like this recent piece on the red-tailed bumblebee, or this one on the red-legged shield bug written by young contributor Noah.

People posts featured entomologists and others with an interest in insects. These might be about members of the HOPE team at the Museum, like Collections Manager Amo Spooner, or those working elsewhere, such as Professor Karim Vahed, who studies bush crickets at the University of Derby.

Make & Do posts focus on creativity. They range from this cartooning tutorial from Chris Jarvis to things you can make at home, like this pitfall trap to catch ground-dwelling insects.

Museum posts take a look behind the scenes and also showcase what’s happening here at the museum, such as this post Events 4U in ’22 for the New Year, or our summer school in August.

The blog also features a gallery of insect photography and art created by young people which is continually expanding.

The Crunchy blog is very much by young people as well as for them. We are keen to receive items about insects, or connected to them, and have already published several articles. If you are a young person who is interested in contributing, you can get in touch via the Contact Us page on the blog or by emailing hopelearning@oum.ox.ac.uk. We would also love submissions of insect pictures for inclusion in our gallery!

And if there is a young person in your life who is crazy about creepy crawlies, or interested in science and nature in general, why not get them to take a look at the Crunchy blog? It could be the start of a wonderful journey into natural history.

Sneak peak: Enjoy this excerpt from a Crunchy on the outside blog post by Ben about Raising Moths!

“One morning we found that a lot of the caterpillars were wandering around, banging their heads on the bottom of the tank. They were also turning a darker green which (after a bit of research) we found out meant they needed to bury and become a chrysalis. We put a deep layer of soil into the tank and within minutes they had disappeared. We tucked them up in the shed for winter and waited. After months of hibernation, they started emerging this spring with crumpled wings, looking very like dead leaves.”

Thanks to National Lottery players for their generous support of the HOPE project through the National Lottery Heritage Fund.