Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
There is an incredible amount of specimen data providing critical information on the natural world, but with less than 10% of the estimated 1.5 billion specimens digitally accessible, who is using this information? Continue reading “Who uses collection data? | Digital Collections Programme”
‘Cetacea’ is the collective order for all whales, dolphins and porpoises. We have more than 2,500 specimens in the Museum collection, at least 500 from the UK strandings programme. Cetaceans are great indicators of wider ocean health – if there’s a problem lower in the food chain, e.g. plastic pollution, it concentrates in cetaceans. If cetacean populations are healthy, so are our oceans. Continue reading “What is a Cetacean and why would you scan it? |Digital Collections Programme”
You may have seen the Museum’s work in the news recently, when our scan of a catshark helped University of Sheffield researchers understand how shark teeth evolved. In this blog, Brett Clark from the Museum’s Vertebrates Palaeobiology department shows us the method used.
Our research, led by Dr Zerina Johanson, investigates the evolution and development of teeth in jawed vertebrates – in particular, the tooth arrangement of present day sharks.
But how exactly do you scan a shark?
Continue reading “How do you scan a shark? | Vertebrates Palaeobiology”