Happy Departmental #Birthday to us! Our shelves are still happily full of wonderful books but I’m just wondering how on earth the ones on the top shelf got there or were retrieved?!? (Loving the ladder too even though a H&S nightmare … ) #libraries #books #NHM #Collections

For anyone needing a little lift today, here’s a link to the botanical drawing #master that is Georg Ehret (1708-1770) and some of his watercolours held by nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social all freely available to view and make you #smile nhm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fu... #botanicalart

Delighted to have come across this lovely book for a patron visit - Isabella Sinclair’s Indigenous Flowers of the #Hawaiian Islands (1855). The first book published with colour images of Hawaiian flowering plants. A great blog here blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2019/03/isab... #rarebooks #flowers

Mycologist Arthur Peck (1870-1940) was such a fun guy (sorry, not sorry) we've added his 150+ images of British fungi to our Digitised Special Collections buff.ly/DwrpsMW. #NaturalHistoryMuseum #SpecialCollections #NatureInArt #Photography #SciArt #Mushrooms
Alt text: Reel of sepia photos of fungi

Surely one of the most exquisite zoological publications of the nineteenth century: Richard Owen's Monograph on the Aye-Aye (1863), with plates drawn by Joseph Wolf and lithographed by James Erxleben. Also a key statement of Owen's conception of evolution. (The @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social copy.)

The original drawing will go on display in the NHM’s Images of Nature gallery in the second rotation of Richard Owen: A Natural Legacy from January (it too, as you can imagine is rather exquisite)

New on advance access: "Colonial world-making and global knowledges at the early modern Cape of Good Hope"

by @gianamar97.bsky.social‬ (@uvahumanities.bsky.social)

#OpenAccess

academic.oup.com/past/advance...

BIG NEWS: For the first time in six years, Britain's rarest breeding bird has successfully nested in the UK!

A pair of Montagu's Harriers have raised four healthy chicks, all of which have taken their first flights.

One of the cuddliest, fluffiest predators on the planet.

Hyperechia consimilis (Asilidae), female. This beauty was collected from Mulanje Massif, or Mt Mulanje in southern Malawi. She is over a hundred years old....

@dipterists.bsky.social @nhm-london.bsky.social #digitising

I’m getting “oh really” or “do I have to listen to this for the umpteenth time” vibes from this marmoset drawn by Weber in Wagner’s Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur (pl.13, supplementband, 1855). #animalexpressions #specialbooks #illustration

Richard Owen was born #OTD 221 years ago .. Also born on 20th July: Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), Jimmy “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” Kennedy (1902-1984), Mad Dog Coll (1908-1932), Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), Ted “3-2-1” Rogers (1935-2001), Diana Rigg (1938-2020) and Chris Cornell (1964-2017) #birthdays

You can also now see it as part of the Richard Owen: A Natural Legacy display in the @nhm-london.bsky.social ‘s free Images of Nature gallery alongside other original #illustrations from Owen’s fascinating drawings collection #naturalhistory #art #gallery #echidna #anatomy

Currently prepping these wooden beauties for a new display on Richard Owen’s science, art and legacy going into the NHM’s Images of Nature gallery tomorrow! #woodengraving #megatherium #bones #specialcollections

Fantastic news Paul! Congratulations 🥳

One of the earliest European accounts of an Australian mammal was of a #quokka, by Willem de Vlamingh in 1696, here on #Rottnest - in fact, he named the island after them (Rottnest means Rat's nest in Dutch - of course it already had a Noongar name: Wadjemup). The account of the voyage... 1/2

Celebrating the first anniversary of Fern the Diplodocus in our garden @nhm-london.bsky.social , here's a little movie explaining exactly how we did it, starring yours truly: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Xb...

A true privilege to be able to observe such iconic wildlife up close in the wonderful Galápagos Islands - especially my all time fav, the blue footed booby. So very special to appreciate how humans and wildlife can thrive together #santacruz #sancristobal #respect

hello. if you work at a university please ask your library to buy my book. it is all about books and libraries and also plants, museums, the Royal Society, and the ways we learn. I think it will be interesting to lots of people, hopefully. thank you www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Morning all. Meet Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, a new neornithishian dinosaur from the Morrison Formation. It goes on display @nhm-london.bsky.social from tomorrow. Paper by @profpaulbarrett.bsky.social and I in @royalsocietypublishing.org Open Science.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The fab jackdashby.bsky.social is giving us @nhm-london.bsky.social’ers a talk on the topics in his new book ‘Nature’s Memory’

The history of how collections develop is not always pleasant - some have a dark past -check out the publication below & read his book!

www.natsca.org/sites/defaul...

Well this is exciting! Here's an interview I did for @nature.com about #NaturesMemory - talking about how natural history #museums can help save the world, as the best evidence we have for understanding environmental change, plus colonial legacies, male bias, and more:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Possibly one of my favourite depictions of a pigeon for #NationalPigeonDay From: A treatise on domestic pigeons; comprehending all the different species know in England ... by John Moore, printed and sold by C. Barry, 1765. #rarebooks #specialcollections #birb

A smidgen of pigeon for National Pigeon Day.

⬆️Learn more about our collections and how to visit us via the link in our bio.

#NaturalHistoryMuseum #SpecialCollections #Birds #NationalPigeonDay #NaturalHistoryIllustration #NatureInArt #SciArt

Coenraad Temminck's (1778-1858) Les Pigeons text was accompanied by illustrations by French artist Pauline Knip (1781-1851). Giving her full control over the engraving and printing process, she controversially re-titled the work “Les Pigeons par Madame Knip”, crediting him by misspelling his name!