More than a Dodo

One of the most loved specimens in the Museum is the enormous Japanese Spider Crab. It’s been on display for over 100 years, so it’s unsurprisingly shown serious signs of deterioration. In July, staff in our Life collections decided that the crab should come off display and undergo conservation treatment. Bethany Palumbo, Conservator in Life Collections, took charge of this famous specimen.

The spider crab looking washed out after 100 years on display

The most obvious damage was the loss of colour – the natural carotenoid pigments had completely faded due to decades of continuous light exposure under the glass roof. However, once it was taken into the laboratory for a closer look, Bethany soon realised that there were actually many areas that were fake, composed of old materials such as acidic cardboard, newspaper and even carved wood.

Some of the old filler material in a leg

These restoration efforts were causing more harm than good, deteriorating and damaging the natural shell material. The whole specimen was loosely held together with animal glue, PVA adhesive and, in some areas, tough wire which was cutting through the shell.

The first step for our conservator was to check the Museum database for information about the specimen, such as when it was donated and by whom. But unfortunately the specimen has no record, nor is it accessioned into the Museum’s collection. Although frustrating, this was important information. As it had no scientific data, Bethany could give this specimen more extensive conservation treatment, without compromising its scientific or historic integrity.

Bethany decided that treatment would consist of cleaning, the removal and replacement of old, deteriorating fill material and the restoration of colour to the shell, making the specimen true to life. These treatments, with the exception of the cleaning element, would be completely reversible.

Dirt build-up on the underside of the shell

Work began by taking the specimen apart to clean and treat each section. Sections were gently vacuumed and a moist cloth used to wipe away 100 years of embedded grime. Bethany removed old fill material, softening it with water vapour to allow it to be easily peeled away.

The next task was to create replacements for the missing sections. Bethany used a combination of acid-free tissue and closed-cell polythene foam. Intricate areas like the claws proved more challenging. Replacements were sculpted free-hand from Plasticine, moulded in silicone and finally cast in Jesomite composite plaster. They now look pretty close to the real thing and are a big improvement on the old wood and paper versions.

Replacement parts made from Jesomite plaster

Before it was ready to go out on display Bethany replaced the faded colour. Japanese Spider Crabs are bright red and white in life, but ours had become washed out beige.

Conservator Bethany with the finished Spider Crab

Photographs of Spider Crabs were used as a reference for the colours, and Bethany also spoke to crustacean experts in the Museum to make sure it was accurate. She used an airbrush and acrylic inks, selected for their high UV resistance. The shell was coated with a barrier layer to allow the ink to be removed in the future, if needed.

Airbrushing the specimen was the most time consuming element, as it required multiple layers and various brushing techniques to make the crab look true to life. Once completed, Bethany gave the crab a final protective coating, providing good water resistance, ready for the next time it needs a good clean!

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer

7 November 201425 November 2014

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Birdsong

The Museum’s historic Huxley Room has had many uses over the years; in 1860 it held the famous Great Debate – the first public discussion of Darwin’s new theory of evolution – and now it is home to many thousands of specimens from the Museum’s entomological collections.

But yesterday it became the backdrop for a photo shoot with Oxford band Stornoway, who are getting ready to release their third studio album in early 2015.

Seen here holding a bird from the Museum’s collection, the band admitted to an ornithological obsession. Singer, lyricist and guitarist Brian Briggs says;

[the new album has] a strong bird theme to it, including field recordings of around 20 different species of birds. We have a bit of a bird thing – I did my PhD on Ducks at Oxford University, which is how I met bandmate Jon.

He says that they love the Museum of Natural History and have a particular interest in quirky locations around Oxford. They’ve just played a sold-out show at the Sheldonian Theatre and will be back for a second night on Thursday 13th November.

We always love playing to our home crowd – we have a bit of a history of unusual venues in the city and the Sheldonian has got to be the most exciting of those – we were the first pop band to play in there when we did our previous gig there in 2009.

Perhaps we can convince them to bring their guitars next time they come to see us…

Bethany Palumbo, Conservator of Life Collections

29 October 201431 October 2014

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Lemur Alert

05 indri — Indri by Tom Nicholson-Lailey

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Lemurs are the most endangered mammals in the world. This diverse group of primates includes more than 100 species, but can only be found on Madagascar and the neighbouring Comoro Islands. On display here in the Museum we have a variety of lemurs, including the skeletons of extinct giant lemurs – some of which were as large as an adult human,

With many species already extinct, the Lemur is in real trouble. This week a World Lemur Festival is being held in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. To spread the word, the Lemur Conservation Foundation have put together a film to celebrate the festival and to highlight how close we are to losing the lemur.

Here in the UK, East Oxford residents and Museum visitors Tom Nicholson-Lailey and Janet McCrae approached us about the Lemur Festival. Janet and her partner Michael set up the McCrae Conservation and Education Fund in 2006 to support local conservation work in Madagascar. In collaboration with the late primatologist Dr Alison Jolly and Durrell Wlldlife, they’ve produced a series of posters, which have been distributed to 200 primary schools, featuring ecosystems under threat. Janet says she is

Mad about helping local children understand the unique habitat and their role in preserving it.

One of the posters designed by McCrae Conservation and Education Fund — One of the posters designed by Janet Robinson for the McCrae Conservation and Education Fund

Tom has made 3 visits to Madagascar for wildlife-watching holidays, and has contributed the fantastic photographs you can see here. He says

“I hope that by travelling to Madagascar and visiting national parks and reserves, we are supporting local conservation work in Madagascar, and helping to ensure that conservation has a high political profile.”

Golden Crowned Lemur — Golden Crowned Sifaka – one of the amazing photos by Tom Nicholson-Lailey

Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, is one of nature’s great treasure-houses, described as a ‘biodiversity hotspot’ for its number and variety of species. Some 90% of all the island’s animal and plant species are ‘endemic’ – found nowhere else in the world. The ‘flagship’ species that best represent Madagascar’s extraordinary biodiversity are the lemurs. No less than 103 species and sub-species of these beautiful, harmless, tree-dwelling primates had been identified by 2012, including as many as 39 species identified since the year 2000.

Most of the island’s original forests have long been destroyed. With a growing population already over 22 million, and extensive rural poverty, the few isolated strips and pockets of forest that comprise the lemurs’ habitats are under increasing threat from slash-and-burn agriculture and from illegal logging of precious hardwood trees.

The current 2012-14 IUCN list of the world’s 25 most endangered primates includes six lemur species:

Blue-eyed Black Lemur (Eulemur flavifrons) – Endangered

Northern Sportive Lemur (Lepilemur septentronalis) – Critically endangered

Silky Sifaka (Propithecus candidus) – Critically endangered

Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur (Microcebus berthae)- Endangered

Red Ruffed Lemur (Varecia rubra) – Endangered

Indri (Indri indri) – Endangered

Much needs to be done to strengthen the efforts of local organisations in Madagascar to raise awareness of the unique lemur plight and to help people find alternative means of making a living.

But Janet explains that there is also some good news. Conservation organisations like the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust are working with local people in Madagascar to help preserve Lemurs’ habitats, and there are some notable success stories.

In the Lake Alaotra area villagers have been helping to protect wetland reed-beds from destruction. The ‘Bandro’, or Bamboo Lemur (Hapalemur alaotrensis), which depends on the reed-beds for food and shelter, is no longer on the Critically Endangered list.

Through Durrell’s website, you could adopt your own lemur; choose from ‘Bandro’ the Bamboo Lemur or ‘Stumpy’ the Ring-tailed Lemur. Janet and Tom emphasise that

“They need all the help they can get from friends like you”.

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer

20 October 201427 October 2014

More than a Dodo3 Comments

A glimpse of paradise

Copyright Ben Robinson, Oxford Fashion Week

We host hundreds of events a year at the Museum; everything from specialist lectures to family friendly activities. But coming up in November we’ve got a real first – a fashion show right here in the middle of the Museum. Oxford Fashion Week will be hosting their headline event here on Saturday 8 November. Birds of Paradise will be the climax to the week of shows and has been inspired by the spectacular Birds of Paradise in the Museum’s collection.

Earlier this year, Oxford University student Hannah Zainuddin approached the Oxford Fashion Week team with her exciting proposal. As a Biology student, evolution is at the heart of her studies and she’s particularly interested in the behaviour of Birds of Paradise, as an example of sexual selection at its most flamboyant. But Hannah’s interest isn’t purely biological. She is excited by the overlap between art and science and wants to use fashion as opportunity to blend the creative and academic elements of Oxford.

I hope people will realise that fashion isn’t just superficial.

Hannah is currently a finalist at St Catherine’s College, Oxford and will be juggling her studies with the role of Creative Director for the Birds of Paradise show.

She’s sourced exciting, original looks by cutting edge professional designers. Watch out for explorations of iridescence, dramatic colour combinations and textures that mirror the display techniques used by the flamboyant birds. Changes in the volume of models’ outfits will also reflect the impressive puffed up feathers that male birds use in their dances.

To set the scene and whet the appetite for the show, the Fashion Week team came in to capture some publicity shots. The results give us a glimpse of the dramatic impact we’ll see on the night with striking models, breathtaking outfits and a unique setting.

The model in all these fabulous shots is Tiffany Saunders who, as well as being a professional model, is the Assistant Director of Oxford Fashion Week.

Her enthusiasm for the museum as a set for the shoot and as a venue for the show was obvious as we scouted out the perfect locations in the galleries. Although she’s been modelling since she was four years old and has worked in countless interesting venues, she says that using the Museum as her framework was a very different experience;

I felt in awe of my surroundings in a way that I’m not used to. Every angle, every shot, every corner of the Museum presented an image of wonder and uniqueness. It was an honour to have been amongst such outstanding surroundings.

Tiffany also explained why she and Oxford Fashion Week director Carl Anglim are so excited about the show:

We have wanted to do an event at the museum for a while because it is so unique and iconic. Part of what sets Oxford Fashion Week apart from other fashion weeks is the cultural heritage the city has to offer, so we always like to use venues that display this supreme asset. Headlining at the museum is something the whole team are particularly excited about. It is a world class venue and will be an incredible highlight of Oxford Fashion Week.

In another first for the team, they will also be holding a double-bill at the Museum on Friday 7 November. Independent Collections will kick off the evening at 6pm, followed by Couture at 7.30pm. Three brilliant shows in 24 hours.

If you’d like to join us for either of these nights, tickets are available through the Oxford Fashion Week website.

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer

17 October 20148 January 2019

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A new home for old fossils

Paleoniscum, a fossil fish from County Durham — Palaeoniscum, a fossil fish from the Upper Permian of County Durham

By Hilary Ketchum, Collections Manager, Earth Collections

A few weeks ago Eliza Howlett (Collections Manager, Earth Collections) and I travelled to Wales to pick up an exciting collection of fossils that had been given to the museum.

The collection was kindly donated by Mr Phil Bennett, who has been finding fossils for over 20 years. In 2004, Phil won the Mary Anning Award for his outstanding contribution to palaeontology by making his collection available for researchers to study. He has an excellent eye for spotting new and interesting things, and thanks to this has a species of trigonotarbid (a spider-like animal) and crustacean named after him.

We had a fantastic day in Wales. After a delicious lunch we looked through the collection, and Phil told us all about the different specimens, pointing out some of his best finds.

One of his favourite specimens is a beautiful fossil fish called Palaeoniscum, from the Upper Permian of County Durham, which is approximately 270-250 million years old.

While Palaeoniscum is instantly recognisable as a fish, some of the older vertebrate fossils in Phil’s collection would look a bit out of place in a modern ecosystem. These fossils, from the Old Red Sandstone in Wales, date from the Lower Devonian period, approximately 410-420 million years ago.

An osteostracan from the Lower Devonian of Wales with a semi-circular head shield (left). The specimen is about 6 cm long from head to tail.

Featuring heavily in Phil’s Old Red Sandstone collection are fossils of strange, fish-like vertebrates (animals with backbones) called osteostracans. Their bodies were covered in large scales and they had massive bony head shields, but they didn’t have jaws or teeth.

The head shields of osteostracans have a mysterious structure called a ‘cephalic field’ (shown in red in the image below). Palaeontologists do not know for sure what the cephalic field was for. Some think that it was a sensory organ that was used to pick up vibrations in the water or changes in electric fields, helping them detect prey or predators.

Phil had very carefully packed all the fossils into cardboard boxes before we arrived, so it didn’t take long for us to load the specimens into the back of the car and drive them safely back to their new home. We have now begun the process of incorporating the fossils into the museum’s permanent collections. The specimens will be taken out of their boxes and put into museum trays, ensuring that all of Phil’s labels are kept so that no information is lost. Over the next few months, the specimens will be catalogued on the museum’s electronic collections database. Each specimen will be given a unique museum number so it can always be easily identified.

It’s a fantastic collection, and we are really excited to have it in the museum. They can be used for display and teaching, and will be available for researchers to study for years to come.

8 October 201417 October 2014

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An Eye for a Pattern

Fifty years ago this month the Royal Swedish Academy announced that Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin had won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She remains the only British woman scientist ever to win a Nobel Prize.

Hodgkin with fellow Nobel laureate Max Perutz,

The Museum celebrated Hodgkin’s achievement with a bust in the Court – the only female face among all the statues looking down on the dinosaurs. Although the bust is currently off display, undergoing conservation work, she deserves her place more than anyone: she first learned the skills of X-ray crystallography in the Museum, and carried out all of her Nobel Prizewinning work there.

Georgina Ferry, author of Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life, and a former author in residence at the Museum, reveals more about Dorothy’s work.

In 1928, when Dorothy Crowfoot (as she then was) arrived in Oxford to study chemistry, the Museum was still the centre of teaching and research in several science subjects including crystallography. The following year the department installed the equipment needed for X-ray work. Dorothy chose to do her Part II research project in X-ray crystallography, the first student to do so. From photographs of the patterns of spots generated by firing beams of X-rays through tiny crystals, she could calculate the positions of the atoms inside the crystal, and so understand how its structure influenced its chemical role.

This shot is believed to show Dorothy with an exhibition of her work, in the Museum — This photo is believed to show Dorothy with an exhibition of her work, in the Museum

At the time the whole Mineralogy and Crystallography Department worked and taught in the room under the tower where Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley conducted their famous debate on human evolution in 1860. There was a darkroom suspended from the ceiling for examining crystals, another curtained-off area for developing photographs, and the X-ray tube, connected to an alarmingly unsafe power supply, sat on a table in the corner.

After getting a first class degree in 1932, Dorothy went to Cambridge to do a PhD with JD Bernal. There she began to study biologically important substances such as cholesterol and pepsin.

Two years later she was back in Oxford with a fellowship at Somerville. She started her own research in a dingy semi-basement in the northwest corner of the Museum. That remained her lab for more than 20 years. It was there that she solved the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in crystals of penicillin and Vitamin B12, the achievements that won her the Nobel Prize.

Dorothy with her children, on the day her Fellowship of the Royal Society was announced, 1947

All through this week, as the Nobel Prizes for 2014 are being announced, you can hear Dorothy’s life story told through her letters on BBC Radio 4, in the series An Eye for Pattern (it will be on iPlayer thereafter if you missed it).

With thanks to the Bodleian Library and the Department of Chemistry,University of Oxford for the use of the photographs.

Author: More than a Dodo

Crab in the lab

Birdsong

Lemur Alert

A glimpse of paradise

A new home for old fossils

An Eye for a Pattern