Category: Museum in the press

More than a dodo

The Museum of Natural History has made it onto Twitter! We are now live and ‘squawking’ with the handle @morethanadodo.

We’re delighted that we’ve gathered almost 300 followers in just one week and several people have already spotted the jingle hidden in our name… can you sing the next line?! If you’re a tweeter, please do follow us to discover more snippets of what’s going on behind the scenes at the Museum.

We’ve had some great tweets so far, which has inspired us to set up a ‘Tweet of the Week’ board in the Museum entrance. This week’s winner is…

My favorite place in the WHOLE world is now on twitter. Everybody rush and follow @morethanadodo

Why not become a dodo disciple, then get your tweet up here for all to see?

Rachel Parle, Education Officer

Winnie at the Museum

The exterior of our Museum is pretty distinctive so it was very exciting to see it featured in a beautiful double page spread in the latest Winnie the Witch book! In ‘Winnie’s Dinosaur Day‘ by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul, the famous witch visits our museum to admire the dinosaurs on display and even goes back in time to meet a real, live Triceratops!

We celebrated the new book in October 2012 with a series of family events, including a visit from Korky Paul, Winnie’s illustrator. But now Oxford University Press are promoting the book with a special blog post about Winnie and the Museum of Natural History. It’s great to see the Museum’s architecture and collections inspiring authors and illustrators yet again.

Rachel Parle, Education Officer

Etymology of Entomology

As a massive BBC Radio 4 fan, I’m always amazed at the variety and quality of documentaries that I come across, and I’m excited to say that tomorrow the Museum will be part of this!

Dr George McGavin, our Honorary Research Associate in Entomology (above right), is presenting a programme called the Etymology of Entomology, which explores the fascinating names given to the planet’s 10 million plus insects. For example, did you know there’s a fly named after Beyonce?!

Featuring on the programme will be Darren Mann, our Assistant Curator of Entomology (above left) who discusses some of his favourite insect names and even some named after himself and George.

I’m proud to say that I will actually be making a fleeting appearance too, to talk about how we use scientific language with children. I was pretty nervous during recording so please excuse me if I say something completely odd!

So, on Saturday 9th March at 10.30am, tune your radios to BBC Radio 4 for The Etymology of Entomology. It’s even been chosen as Radio 4’s Documentary of the Week so it will be available to download for a week from Friday 15th March. In the meantime, you can listen to a quick clip here and find out some of the Entomology department’s favourite insect names on their excellent blog.

Rachel Parle, Education Officer