Cockroach adventures in St Petersburg

One of our specimens has just arrived back from a trip to St. Petersburg in Russia! This spectacular fossil shows two large cockroaches preserved in copal (an immature form of amber). It is originally from Colombia and is around 2 million years old. Dmitri Logunov (our Curator of Entomology) offered to take it to one [...]

Palaeontology International Rescue (well Wigan anyway) – Part 2

David Green and I have just got back from Wigan and Leigh College geology museum. There are quite literally just days before the museum closes and the collection disappears. We collected about 100 fossils, particularly things like graptolites, Solnhofen fossils and trilobites, all things we will be able to use in the museum for things [...]

Fake amber

I’ve had an old inquiry passed on to me that was never collected. It is quite interesting as it is not what it first seems! This spectacular specimen looks like amber, which when you dig a little deeper is actually fake. Amber is fossil tree resin which forms lumps and often traps insects and other [...]

A jewish amber collector and the Nazis

I had a really interesting e-mail this morning from a researcher called Rachel King about some amber we have in the collection. Rachel came to look at our Paneth Amber collection last year.  Alfred Paneth was a Jewish Chemist who lived in Königsberg, Germany when the Nazi’s were coming to power. One of his passions [...]