This is my last post before my Christmas break. Here’s the view from my office window to prove we have a slight dusting of snow.
A dusting of snow on The Manchester Museum
It has been a great year. We have opened the Manchester Gallery and the Darwin The Evolutionist exhibition as part of our Darwin festival. We have continued to run and develop our A-level geology sessions, which have proved a great sucess. There has been an amazing range of public activities from Fern Day to Polar day. Rebecca (the Assistant Curator of Natural Sciences) has been doing stirling work documenting the collection which is fundamental in making the collections available for researchers, exhibitions, learning and the public.
I was very sorry to hear that one of our regular researchers Roger Jacobi died last week. His research pushed forward our understanding of the Last Ice Age and he was a genuinely nice man.
In the last couple of months have been focused on research for the new Mammals Gallery. This has been really interesting and promises to transform this part of the museum in the next couple of years.
Thanks to everyone here at the museum who I have worked with over the last year from staff to volunteers. I look forward to exciting things to come next year.
I thought you’d like to see some Christmas cards from our William Boyd Dawkins archive here at the museum. Some of them date back to 1875.
Christmas card sent to William Boyd Dawkins in 1875
William Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929) was Curator of Natural History at Manchester Musum from 1869 until he retired in 1908. He undertook pioneering work on early humans in Britain (especially at Creswell Crags), coal deposits and was even commissioned to produce some plans for the Channel Tunnel in 1882.
He obviously liked Christmas and kept his favourite Christmas cards in a album which is now in the archive which accompanies his collection here at the Manchester Museum. See more cards on Flickr.
This card, from 1880 shows a cartoon of a hippo, elephant, wooly rhino and wooly mammoth all of which lived in the last Ice Age
This Christmas card sent to William Boyd Dawkins 1912, shows a cartoon of Australopithecus an early himinid
Staff and volunteers here at the museum have just finished putting together objects for our Darwin outreach programme. About 20 objects will be taken to community groups around Manchester in the new year to help talk about our Darwin exhibition. Some of the most exciting objects are a collection of ammonites showing evolution over millions of years.
The pattern of the edge of the chambers inside the shell changes over time. The oldest ammonite which is 340 million years old shows a simple curved pattern on the shell. The next oldest is 330 million years old and shows a looped pattern. The youngest at 200 million years old, shows a very complicated pattern.
All the ammonites are all from Britain and show how fossils have changed over time by the process of natural selection. The different patterns are used by geologists to tell how old the rocks are. The fossils always follow this pattern nomatter where they have been found.
The Manchester Museum is having a Polar Day this Saturday the 5th of December.
A day bursting with polar activities for all the family! Hold some Inuit objects; make some Inuit snow goggles; create your own polar scene; see our penguin; find out about polar birds from the RSPB; listen to some polar bear storytellling; watch a family friendly film screening; learn about climate change and meet some experts.
I’ve been having a look at the fossil fish collection here at the museum in preparation for a visit by a researcher from Bristol University next week and I’d forgotten how amazing it is!
Fossil fish from the Devonian, 370 million years old
Dr Phil Andreson is coming up to Manchester to give a talk on The War Between Tooth and Food: Integrating experimental and theoretical analyses to understand dental morphology at the Faculty of Life Sciences here at the University. He also wants to have a look at the jaws and teeth of fossil fish from the Carboniferous, which forms the basis for his research.
We have a over 4500 fossil fish in the collection mostly from a dedicated collectors Hickling and Watson.
PaleoManchester is now on Twitter! This gives you even more chance to catch up on what I’m up to each day. Either keep an eye on the right hand side of this blog or follow me on Twitter.
The other exciting musuem web news is there two brand new museum blogs:
We have started doing some research into some of the themes we might use when we redevelop the mammals gallery here at the museum.
It is a really exciting time for us, as we will get chance revamp the very popular displays. The new gallery is set to open in 2011 and will combine many of people’s favourite animals with topical issues such as climate change and sustainability.
It is really great coming into work on a Monday morning and having the whole day set aside to look at things like mass extinction, polar bear and the last Ice Age. I’ll keep you posted on developments.
Pliosaurs are types of plesiosaurs, they lived upto 200 million years ago and dominated the seas covering Britain. This new discovery is really important because of it’s size. It gives a sense of how rich in life the seas must have been, just to provide enough food for this predator!
Have a look at our Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs next time you are in the museum. Even these are tiny compared to the new one they have found in Dorset!
Here’s the next installment of the palaeontology store tours. I’ll put the third one up next week, I don’t want to give you too much excitement all in one go.
