#OTD 250 years ago John Reeves (1774-1856), the English naturalist and Inspector of Teas for the East India Company, was born.

Today, we start a new collaboration with UCL Information Studies for 5 Digital Humanities students to catalogue and digitise our Reeves botanical artwork collection.

The #thylacine is extinct because farmers convinced politicians they were killing their sheep - they weren't. History repeating itself with Swiss #wolves .

What a treat! Going through the The Linnean Society of London collections to get ready for my talk on this mysterious #thylacine illustration by John Lewin - one of the very first Western depictions of these icons of #extinction . The free online event is on 14th May: members.linnean.org/events/65a368d…

There is a great irony that I am confronted with often in my work Natural History Museum : 1. we are in a biodiversity crisis, awareness of the decline in biodiversity is rising, engagement with nature is very high through apps, websites, entertainment, even a GCSE in Natural History..

Madagascan weevils camouflaged against lichen encrusted twigs. Can you see them all? Display piece from probably 1950s public galleries ⁦Natural History Museum⁩

#Archive30 #Museums and #ArchivesForAll British Museum founded in 1753 & 1st public museum in the world,was free to all from the start. But in 1810 the Trustees abandoned the restrictive (free & much maligned) ticketing system & invited people in to wander freely. #BritishMuseum

Such a great community project. Some of the dinos in the Park were illustrated in posters by their designer Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins - all freely available to view here by NHM Library and Archives nhm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/coll… #CrystalPalaceDinos

#birb #bestbird #dirtybird #bluefootedbooby

🎉 My new article is now available online with Museum History Journal - “Money matters: ‘following the money’ to reconstruct Walter Rothschild’s ‘zoological enterprise’ and the history of the Zoological Museum Tring, 1889–1900 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Capricorn.

From John Bevis' Uranographia Britannica (ca. 1749), a watershed in the history of celestial atlases, being among the last to show allegiance to the old animated mythology of the heavens.

More in our latest post: publicdomainreview.org/collection/bev…

“Inch perfect” - that’ll be my Beebster ⚽️💪🏻

Exciting new #PlantHumanities journal! Congratulations to editors, contributors, & all The White Horse Press Kew Gardens Library and Archives Kew Science RHUL GeoHumanities

Leonardo da Vinci was born #OTD 572 years ago. As well as an artist, he worked as a civil & military engineer & produced several highly finished maps. This map will be on display at The King’s Gallery, London this autumn. bit.ly/3UfrR1C

#womenartists #botanicalart

For #PlantAppreciationDay we thought you might like some botanical #Artwork from our #DigitisedCollections .

Clara Maria Pope's (1767-1838) 11 drawings illustrating the species and varieties of the genus Paeonia #SpecialCollections #WomenArtists

nhm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44NH…

Loving this #booktitle and the “Doomed” title of one of Arthur Peck’s (1870-1940) incredible #photographs for #FungiFriday . “Cramp balls” as charms & the inimitable “dog stink horn” too - what’s not to love about the #fabulous world of #fungi ? Available to peruse NHM Library and Archives

My very own (signed) copy of this gorgeous irrestible masterpiece from
Dr Erica McAlister which landed on my desk today 🥰 And what’s even better is the first pic is of a #beefly Thank you & huge congratulations Erica! X

Walk of the cinereous vulture

From mighty redwoods to bulbous baobabs, trees come in a massive variety of shapes and sizes. There are about 73,300 tree species on Earth — and each plays an important role in helping humanity thrive. conservation.org/stories/unusua…

Philip Henry Gosse was born #OTD in 1810, he was instrumental in establishing ZSL's first #aquarium , the 'Fish House' London Zoo:
londonzoo.org/zoo-stories/hi…
#illustrations are from his #books