Category: Uncategorized

More than a DodoLeave a comment

Whales making waves

Gemma Aboe's avatarOnce 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…

View original post 30 more words

More than a DodoLeave a comment

Latest on the lawn

_DSC4589

_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.

_DSC4600

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

_DSC4574
Photos: Scott Billings

More than a DodoLeave a comment

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

More than a DodoLeave a comment

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

Image

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].

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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.

More than a Dodo1 Comment

Our new-look blog

Westwood paussidae

The Hope Entomological Collections blog has landed! All of the content of the blog has now been transferred over to the WordPress platform- we just have some final tweaks to make. The toughest decision is going to be over the image that we use for the background. So many insects, not enough time.

We’ll be trialling a number of different pictures over the next week or so, so remember to check back regularly and let us know which one you like best by leaving a comment on this post.

Today’ss background picture (also above) is of a historic collection drawer from the J.O. Westwood Paussidae collection. Westwood was the first curator of the Hope Entomological Collections.

The old version of the blog will be left on-line. If you are looking for it, it can be found here

More than a DodoLeave a comment

Featured photo – Crystals within crystals

Crystals within crystals

We have been doing a spot of mineral photography today, as part of an imaging project being undertaken by Dara Lohnes, a Leicester Museum Studies student who will be based with us for the next eight weeks. This is one of her shots – beautiful isn’t it?

It shows crystals within crystals – sprays of golden brown rutile crystals (titanium dioxide) inside colourless crystals of quartz (silicon dioxide). The metallic silver  is a mineral called hematite (iron oxide). The specimen comes from Ibitiara, Bahia, Brazil and was purchased by the Museum in 2007.