It is Friday and everything today is a Monday problem. The theme is party for #ExploreYourArchive today! We present Richard Owen's 'Ballroom scraps' - from reluctant dancers to the one who ate too much lobster salad! #EYAParty

What a privilege to see the first two #echidna drawings sent to Europe, in NHM Library and Archives - clearly based on dead animals, lying belly-flat with their legs splayed. They go a long way to explaining why so much echidna #taxidermy looks like this, posed in a way no animal could move.

#Friday smiles from NHM Library and Archives #mollusca sectional library and father & son de Favanne de Montcervelle in La conchyliologie, ou histoire naturelle des coquilles de mer (1780, plates). The engraving detail, symmetry & composition are just sublime (dodgy croc though!) #rarebooks

Nice to spot mine and Ann’s book on Elizabeth Gould in some lovely company Natural History Museum ‘s shop as you come out of the #Birds : brilliant and bizarre #exhibition nhm.ac.uk/visit/exhibiti… #ornithologalArt #womenartists birbs

#OTD in 1858, a Malay teenager called Ali collected this bird-of-paradise & gave it to Alfred Russel Wallace. It led to the species' first scientific description. I wrote about how a far greater diversity of people deserve credit in the history of science: natsca.blog/2020/10/22/tel…

Come join our team! 📢 #JobVacancy Digital Special Collections Librarian Location: Natural History Museum (South Kensington) Permanent role. Hours per week: 18 Closing date: 14/11/2024 jobs.nhm.ac.uk/internal/Job/J… #MuseumJobs #LibraryJobs

🦋 Andrea Hart 🦋

We started our 12 days of #frogmas with a frog associated with Darwin, today we are featuring a frog associated with Alfred Russel Wallace, a flying frog in his "The Malay Archipelago : the land of the orang-utan, and the bird of paradise : a narrative of travel...", publ. 1869.

Joan Procter was the 1st woman to be ZSL's Curator of Reptiles & Amphibians, appointed to this role in 1923. A talented designer & #artist, she often provided illustrations for her papers in Proceedings of the Zoological Society. More in our blog: zsl.org/news-and-event… #frogmas

News | British Museum appoints new Director of Collections from British Library museumsandheritage.com/advisor/posts/…

Official launch day today. Hope it helps spider positivity

Excited to share our recent paper! We developed a key to the genera of Caligidae, the largest family of parasitic copepods, which includes >500 species in 27 genera. Available here: doi.org/10.1645/24-97 I spent a lot of time imaging copepods for this project... [🧵1/5]

"John Gould and the slender-billed curlew" is our new #blog by Ann Datta, #Volunteer Art Cataloguer. Sadly this curlew was declared extinct last year. Elizabeth Gould illustrated the species in "The birds of Europe", publ. 1832-37: zsl.org/news-and-event… #WomensArt

Sir David Attenborough's programmes have consistently launched new formats, concepts & technology. These clips demonstrates how his programmes transformed our understanding of the natural world. discoverwildlife.com/people/attenbo… discoverwildlife.com/people/attenbo…

Leen Ekow and Bryony Hart on target this afternoon 🎯 #WeAreBromley

If you missed my lecture to the Linnean Society on how C18th British abolitionists come to view the slave trade and British colonial slavery as unnatural, a "dread perversion" of nature, you can now watch it on YouTube youtu.be/TB3raq3iFu4

Excellent article by Steven Falk in British Wildlife Mag about 14 species of bee new to Britain, since the publication of our field guide - 10years ago!

Whoop! 😍

Exhibition: Curious Minds: Thomas Pennant & Gilbert White Our exhibition is itself the product of a collaboration between the #AHRC-funded Curious Travellers Project, the Natural History Museum and Gilbert White’s House and Garden. Dates: 8th April to 22nd June 2025

#OTD in 1842 WC Cotton in New Zealand wrote to Richard Owen with evidence showing Owen was correct about the giant moa, a large, extinct, flightless bird. Owen had been ridiculed for his idea about this bird. Part of the letter is in our Proceedings: …lpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.…