Scarabs at the Manchester Museum

Here’s a great video of two of my colleagues chatting about scarab beetles.

Why not visit their blogs:

Egypt at the Manchester Museum

Entomology Manchester

 

Installing the new Plesiosaur case

We’ve just finished installing the new Plesiosaur case.

Here are some images from start to finish.

The full story of the discovery of the Plesiosaur can be found on our website.

Climate change & the rock record, new course for adults

We are running a fantastic new geology course for adults here at the museum. Here are the details:

Every Wed for 10 weeks from Wed 18 Jan / 3-5 pm

Climate change & the rock record

Find out how rocks and fossils can be used to understand and reconstruct past environments and climates and how this can be used to help predict possible climate change in the future. Organised by the Workers’ Educational Association.

Book on 0151 243 5340 or at www.nw.wea.org.uk
£62 for ten weeks or free for those in receipt of means tested benefits

Buxton Diamonds

I had an enquiry yesterday from Roy Starkey, the President of the Russell Society wanting to know if we had any ‘Buxton Diamonds’?

He explained they were actually small perfectly formed quartz crystals that were washed out of the soil around Buxton, Derbyshire back in the 1700 and 1800s.

After a bit of searching I found some:

'Buxton Diamonds' for 1873

It seems that they come from a place called Diamond Hill, here mentioned in an 1868 National Gazetteer article. They are probably recrystallised in the limestone.

It’s always really exciting to find such beautiful specimens in the collection. Roy Starkey’s research is ongoing, so I’ll let you know what else he finds.

Climate Change 6th form talks

I’ve recently give a series of talks about Climate Change and the impact on life on Earth to sixth form groups. Stockport Grammar School have posted a nice blog about my talk there.

The talks were a great opportunity to discuss past climate change with students. I concentrated on the dramatic climate change in the Last Ice Age, showing evidence from Creswell Crags. I then went on to explore Snowball Earth, when ice probably reached the equator and Greenhouse Earth, when forests reached the poles.

To end the talk, I spoke about the implications of current climate change and our responsibility.

I’ve really enjoyed giving these talks, which were also given at Aquinas College, Stockport and St. Christopher’s C of E High School, Accrington.

Want to work at The Manchester Museum?

We are currently advertising some paid traineeships to become a curator.

So if you’d like to train to be a biology curator at The Manchester Museum or at Leeds Museum, follow the link to apply.

Good luck!

Two great Blogs

Here are a couple of great blogs I’ve come across:

The Barometer who came to the museum the other day.

See their podcast:

There’s also a great blog run by the Curator of Micropalaeontology at the Natural History Museum, Giles Miller.

Eyjafjallajokull ash settles at the museum

I’m delighted to say we now have a sample of the ash that caused so many problems in 2010. Do you remember the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland thatcaused so many planes to be grounded?

Eyjafjallajokull ash collected a week after the eruption in March 2010

The ash looks remarkably innocent doesn’t it? It is a sort of ash called Trachyandesite.

Many thanks go to Dr Hugh Tuffen, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, who donated the ash when he gave a talk at Manchester Science Festival last week.

…and in case you are wondering here’s how you pronounce it!

What would you build a lighthouse out of?

Sounds a strange question, but this is what I’m asking Manchester University engineering students.

I’m in the middle of teaching engineering students how to identify different sorts of rocks and asking them to think about how they might use them, based on their properties. This is a key part of their studies and will be helpful throughout their future careers.

 
First of all, I ask the students to describe ten different rock samples using terms such as grain size, cement and the way they break. After that, they have to try and work out if the rock is sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic and then give the rock a name such as granite or sandstone. Then comes the fun bit!

Gneiss from the Museum's collection. Good lighthouse foundations!

They are given a map of an area of Scotland where they have to decide where to build their lighthouse (hopefully on strong foundations and somewhere near the coast) and then they have to decide which rocks they would use to make the lighthouse walls, floor, road and sea defenses.

We have run this session a couple of times now and the students seemed to have really enjoyed it. More complicated than you first imagine!

Is it dinosaur bone?

Continuing the dinosaur theme, whilst the BBC’s Planet Dinosaur series is on, here are some tips on how to tell if it is real dinosaur bone.