Andrea Hart

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

Botanical drawing of a plant

Botanical drawing of a Cedar branch

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

Large fold-out plate of the whole aye-aye.

The aye-aye at the waterside

The aye-aye's distinctive spindly digits.

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)

Colonial world-making and global knowledges at the early modern Cape of Good Hope* Abstract. As the Cape of Good Hope was integrated into early modern colonial world-making projects, it came to be regarded as ‘the western part of the East

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 🥳

A quokka standing on its hind-legs

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

YouTube video by Natural History Museum Creating a bronze dinosaur for the Natural History Museum gardens | The story behind Fern

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...

‘Natural history museums can save the world’: anti-colonialism, conservation and climate change Zoologist Jack Ashby explains why it’s vital to invest in protecting specimens stored in scientific collections.

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

Illustration of Columba Turtur pigeon perched on branch full page in open book

Illustration of Columba Francix, white red and black feathers perching on a branch full page in open book

Illustration of Columba Vinacea pigeon perching on a branch looking down on full page of open book

Illustration of Colombe Jounud pigeon perching on a branch full page in open book

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!

The Jill Smythies Award The Jill Smythies Award

Each year we recognise an outstanding botanical artist with the Jill Smythies Award.

The winner, whose work must involve diagnostically relevant, published illustrations, receives a medal and £1,000.

Send in your nominations by 30 September.

Find out more: www.linnean.org/the-...

Opening soon! Don’t miss this unique exhibition revealing the remarkable world of wasps and find out why we should all appreciate these incredibly fascinating, ecologically important animals. #WaspLove

John Abbot (1751-1840) spent most of his life collecting and drawing the #birds and #insects of Georgia. He was born on either May 31 (parish records) or June 1 (Abbot's choice). See his birds tomorrow! #SpecialBooks #NaturalHistoryMuseum #otd

Alt text: A reel showing drawings of insects

The Unnatural History of Extinction You are a survivor of many great dyings. How did we come to think of ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish forever?

Join @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social as she unravels how the concept of extinction is deeply political - shaped by empire, science, and survival - and why it matters now more than ever as we face the possibility of a sixth mass extinction.

June 26, 6–8:15pm, Linnean Society

Book here: bit.ly/3T194pc

Today I give you happy anteaters, a happy chameleon and a happy (dancing?) sloth all courtesy of volume 1 of @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social coloured copy of Albertus Seba’s wonderful/curious masterpiece Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri (1734-65). “Accurata” is also in the title.. #rarebooks