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Whales making waves

Once in a Whale

Yesterday BBC Radio Oxford interviewed Bethany Palumbo, Conservator of Life Sciences at OUMNH about our ‘Once in a Whale’ project. Do listen to the broadcast online, before it runs out in 6 days!                    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01fp8r2

Malcolm Boyden’s interview with Bethany lasts 14 minutes- select ‘1:06min’ to listen in on their chat about the whales, the museum renovation, Bethany’s experiences of being a conservator and more!

Project update
As we enter into the last 5 weeks on the whale conservation project, we are pressing ahead with re-articulating the skeletons with new screw fixings and stainless steel wire (- our hands end up looking like we had a fight with a sharp clawed cat).

We’ve also been meeting with professional riggers, who once the main scaffolding has been de-assembled, will raise the cetacean skeletons into their NEW positions- watch this space!

Our next…

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Latest on the lawn

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_DSC4566As I explained last week, the outside of the Museum has been getting a make-over, and the finishing touches are now rolling into place. Each day I’ve checked progress through my office window as roll after roll of turf has been immaculately lined up and pressed firmly into place. It took the team just 5 days to transform the space from a dusty wasteland into a spectacular expanse of technicolor green.

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Looking out of the window today, the new irrigation system is obviously doing a great job and the grass is lush and getting long. The only problem is the bright orange fence that surrounds the lawn and stops us from testing it out. I can’t wait until that comes down and we can use it for the first time. I just hope there are a few more chances for a picnic lunch on the lawn before Autumn really sets in!

Rachel Parle, Education Officer

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Photos: Scott Billings

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Space traveller’s arrival

Limerick meteoriteTwo hundred years ago today, at 9 o’clock in the morning on 10 September 1813, the residents of County Limerick in Ireland had a bit of a surprise. They heard loud bangs as a shower of meteorites fell to ground. More than 48 kilograms of rock had just arrived from space!

More specifically, it had come from the asteroid belt, a band of rocky debris that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Collisions can knock asteroids out of orbit, and occasionally send them hurtling on a collision course with Earth. Small fragments burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, forming meteors or ‘shooting stars’. Larger pieces fall to the Earth’s surface, and these are known as meteorites.

Limerick chondrulesThe meteorite that fell over County Limerick broke into pieces, and the one in our collection is the second largest. It weighs nearly 8.5 kilograms, and landed near the village of Faha on the estates of the Blakeney family. The Rev. Robert Blakeney was an Oxford graduate whose ministry was in the parish of South Elm in Somerset. The meteorite was perhaps found in the rectory after his death, as it was the new rector’s younger brother, the Rev. John W. Griffith, who presented it to the University of Oxford in 1825.

The outer crust of the meteorite is smooth and dark where the surface melted as it fell through the Earth’s atmosphere. The inside is a pale grey rock. Look closely at the photograph to the left, and you can see flecks of metal – nickel iron alloy – and tiny rounded crystalline grains called chondrules. The picture shows an area about 35 mm x 20 mm.

The chondrules show that the Limerick belongs to a class of stony meteorites called ‘chondrites’. At around 4.55 billion years old, chondrite meteorites are some of the oldest materials in the Solar System. They give researchers important clues about how the planets – including the Earth – originally formed.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the arrival on Earth of the Limerick meteorite, we are exhibiting it in  ‘Presenting…’, a changing display of treasures from the Museum’s collection. Although the main Museum is closed, this display can be seen by visitors on the way through to the Pitt Rivers Museum, so do come and have a look. It might be the oldest thing you’ll ever see!

Photography: Dara Lohnes

Monica T. Price, Head of Earth Collections

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What’s on the van? – 7 spot ladybird

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This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Richard Comont of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

The 7-spot ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, is one of the most iconic examples of British wildlife. Probably our best-known beetle, its image has been used as the logo for books, clothes, and much more.

It’s one of our largest ladybirds, up to 8mm long, and it can be found almost anywhere – it’s not fussy about habitat and usually arrives shortly after an aphid colony has established. Gardens and rough ground are good areas for the species – they especially love nettle patches!  Their bright red colouration makes them easy to spot, but is actually a warning to predators – ladybirds practice chemical warfare by producing a foul-tasting yellow liquid from their knee joints when disturbed.

_5450712_xlThe 7-spot has been familiar to farmers and gardeners throughout history as a brightly-coloured guardian against greenfly, and it’s from this that ladybirds get their slightly odd name. Bright red in colour (matching the cloak of the virgin Mary in early biblical illustrations) and with seven black spots recalling the seven sorrows of Mary, these tiny predators were clearly a gift from the gods to farmers suffering from aphids on their crops, and so they became known as ‘Our Lady’s birds’, which became shortened to ‘ladybirds’.

Most people recognise the 7-spot, but are surprised to hear that there are actually 47 different ladybird species in Britain alone! The UK Ladybird Survey team have published a new ladybird handbook to help people learn about and identify these fascinating insects – why not submit your next sighting at www.ladybird-survey.org?

What's on the van?

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Seeing prehistoric life in 3D

3d trilobite

On 22nd August, Eliza Howlett and I joined in the London press launch of ‘GB3D Type Fossils’, an exciting project to make images and information about some of our most important fossils freely available online. It is a major collaboration between the Museum of Natural History at Oxford, the National Museum of Wales, the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, and the British Geological Survey, and is funded by Jisc, a charity that champions the use of digital technologies in UK education and research.

Type fossils are the specimens used to define each species of plant or animal. They are the ‘heritage specimens’ of the geological world, and need to be preserved carefully for future generations of scientists. The GB3D Type Fossil project is a rather clever way to let researchers, collectors and enthusiasts see our type specimens up close, wherever they are in the world, without any risk of damage to the specimens.

Some of the fossils have been scanned using a 3D laser-scanner. Their images can be enlarged up, rotated and viewed online using free software such as Meshlab. They can also be printed out on a 3D printer, and the one running at the press launch generated a lot of interest! Other fossils were photographed as ‘3D anaglyphs’ so that if you wear cyan-red 3D specs, the fossils appear in three dimensions. The remainder can be seen in really good conventional photographs that show lots of detail. There’s plenty of information about the fossils too, for example how old they are and where they are from.

3D ElizaAbove you can see a 3D anaglyph (stereoscopic) photo of the type specimen of Barrandia bianularis, a trilobite that lived around 464 to 467 million years ago. It appears on the website in 3D when viewed using cyan-red viewing glasses. Have a look here.

Eliza is our Manager of Earth Collections, and has been managing the project to scan and document around 2,000 British type fossils in the Oxford collection. Her work is nearly complete, and the Oxford fossils will ‘go live’ on the website http://www.3d-fossils.ac.uk/ over the next couple of months.  Have fun exploring it!

Monica Price, Head of Earth Collections

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The Flame-Shouldered Blister Beetle – re-discovered at last!

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One of Britain’s rarest beetles is the secretive, endangered Flame-shouldered Blister Beetle Sitaris muralis – belonging to the family Meloidae (oil and blister beetles). This attractive 8-14 mm long beetle was last found in Oxfordshire up until 1969, but then it was rediscovered in Brockenhurst, Hampshire in 2010 (the last New Forest record before that was in 1947) on a brick wall over 100 years old. However, they are seldom seen outside the nest burrows of the Hairy-footed Flower Bee Anthophora plumipes in old mortar [the entry / exit point looks rather like bullet holes].

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It is not clear why this parasitic beetle is so rare as the host is widespread throughout Britain and common in the south in spring; the larvae feed on the bee’s brood.

Paul and Helen Brock have found the beetle each year since 2010 mainly in August, mostly dead with at least one apparently evicted from the nest (the latest finds though, on 20-21 August 2013 were alive). Others may be trodden on by passers by, as these clumsy insects fall to the pavement in a busy village site. The slightly brighter males have much longer antennae than females; both sexes have strange-shaped wings designed to enter a bees nest.

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The bright orange is presumed to be a warning. In addition to sporting warning colours, during perceived danger such as attack by a possible predator, males curl up in defence, remaining in the position for up to a minute.

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This elusive insect could turn up almost anywhere, but is most likely in southern England on a brick wall- so keep an eye out next time you are out and about!

Our thanks to Paul and Helen Brock for supplying the content and photographs for this post.