Magical boxes of mystery

Most curators have somewhere where they keep boxes of objects that they haven’t quite got round to dealing with yet. For me it’s about 50 boxes of minerals that have labels on them such as “Duplicate” and “from Education”. Often these are not the best specimens and don’t deserve much time spending on them.

Since Nature’s Library has opened, I’ve tried to set aside half and hour here and there to look through these boxes and there are quite literally some real gems.

Here’s the contents of one of my favorite boxes  which I’ll be sorting through in the next few weeks.

As you can see, some really incredible specimens with some fantastic information too!

Manchester Meteorites solve Egyptian mystery

This amazing research on our collections solves an enduring mystery:

Iron in Egyptian relics came from space

Meteorite impacts thousands of years ago may have helped to inspire ancient religion.

The Gerzeh bead (top) has nickel-rich areas, coloured blue on a virtual model (bottom), that indicate a meteoritic origin.

Open Univ./Univ. Manchester

The 5,000-year-old iron bead might not look like much, but it hides a spectacular past: researchers have found that the ancient Egyptian trinket is made from a meteorite.

The result, published on 20 May in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science¹, explains how ancient Egyptians obtained iron millennia before the earliest evidence of iron smelting in the region, solving an enduring mystery. It also hints that the ancient Egyptians regarded meteorites highly as they began to develop their religion.

“The sky was very important to the ancient Egyptians,” says Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester, UK, and a co-author on the paper. “Something that falls from the sky is going to be considered as a gift from the gods.”

Read the whole article here.

Find out more about Egypt on Campbell’s blog.

Rockdrop – bring in your mystery rocks and fossils

Our monthly Rock Drop returns on the 30^th Many from 2-3pm in the Collection Study Centre.

If you have any interesting rocks, fossils or potential meteorites bring them in for me to take a look at, ask questions and meet other geology enthusiasts.

Introducing Sisyphus, our brand new Ichthyosaur!

Sisyphus is an ichthyosaur collected by Howard Turner from the beach at Port Mulgrave, near Whitby.

This amazing specimen is named by Howard after the ancient Greek legend of the man who was punished by the Gods and was cursed for eternity to roll a boulder up a mountain. Howard felt an affinity with this after dragging the fossil back to his car before months of delicate preparation.

It is an amazing addition to the collection, which I hope to put on display very soon.

Brian Cox opens Nature’s Library!

Brian Cox opened the new Nature’s Library a few weeks ago now. It was really good of him to come and support our new gallery which has been the culmination of many  months work.

Nature’s Library is a celebration of the amazing objects in our natural science collections. We really wanted to get people excited about nature and show how the collection is used, from cutting edge research into endangered plants and animals to public events.

Come along and have a look at the gallery for yourself.

My day in conservation

I’m Hetti, a volunteer at Manchester Museum and recently I spent a day working in conservation to clean up some glass slides with thin sections of coal balls and fossilized wood. They had become very dirty sat in storage for a number of years and were being transferred into more suitable card trays lined with acid free tissue paper which will help to preserve them and keep them clean for years to come. Having them neatly stored also makes them much easier to find when they are needed in the future.

Slides before being cleaned and repackaged

To clean them up the dirt and dust was removed with a tissue and then I used swabs dipped in a mix of water and methylated spirit to clean the glass and remove any dust and dirt remaining. I found it a very rewarding job to see the final results all cleaned up and easily accessible for anyone who wishes to use them in the future.

Slides after they have been cleaned and in their new boxes

NatSCA conference 2013

 

Here’s Andrew’s write up of the NatSCA conference last week.