Katie Collins

It DOES have Archy the giant squid, yes!

Nope! We have windows even! It's luxurious 😂

We have many of Elizabeth Gray's fossils in the Benthic Mollusca collection at NHM, waiting for an intrepid researcher to pick up where she left off!

The Library and Archives are holding an open day in the Earth Sciences Library.

Friday 20 March 2026, 11.00 - 15.00.
Lasting Impressions Gallery (Free).

☝️Full details in our bio link.

#NaturalHistoryMuseum #WomensMonth #WomenInScience #WomenInStem #IWD26 #ExploreYourArchives #MuseumArchives

Me too 😭 they were amazing and the world is poorer without them

It's been a long week which is probably why I'm crying while telling my friend about passenger pigeons /o\

The lure of getting to pat the world's largest snail (I brought one out to meet the adoring public) cannot be dismissed

Just participated in a museum event where teenagers got to vote for the next exhibition they want to fund, out of three pitches, and they picked mine!! Someone page the director, we got molluscs to build display cases for!!

So many accounts of Palaeontology Fieldwork TM are about hunting bones in deserts. Istg one day I'm gonna write about trudging waist deep through rivers in the rain in search of one specific endemic scallop. With a full supporting cast of wasps, eels, and malfunctioning Mitsubishi vans

screenshot of the "filters" tab on a search for all observations of the genus Tridacna on iNaturalist, showing different options including a checked box next to "research grade" and "CC0" selected in the "Photo licensing" pull-down menu

just as a PSA to anyone this might be useful for: you can filter searches in iNat by CC licensing, so you can view all phot observations that are free to use. Maybe less AI content up there... for now... although photo quality often includes less beautifully framed images, less clear water, etc...

Right?? Pictures of the dang things abound because they're gorgeous and apparently everyone who takes a camera anywhere near one is compelled to use up all their film on it. Why is an AI version NEEDED???

😭😭😭

*morphologist, also: don't trust autocorrect EITHER lmao

500% agree. As a morphological, I would say that is the kind of shape that can only be achieved through a combination of molecular gastronomy and extreme hubris

An screenshot of an image from Adobe stock which purports to be of "mantle details of Tridacna giant clam shell marine" (text below image) but which actually shows an illustration of a sort of frilly multi-layered fleshy skirt-looking thing in vaguely brown and blue Tridacna-like colours

This is your reminder that stock image sources cannot be trusted as sources for biology any more because what the hell is this shit? I searched "Tridacna" in DuckDuckGo with options to hide AI images and the global AI killswitch turned on. This is on the first page of results

Drop in overseas workers is ‘car crash’ for UK hospitals and care homes, say experts Care roles hit particularly hard by UK’s lurch to the right on migration, according to analysis of Home Office data

Self-inflicted misery.

www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

“We don’t need this anymore,” you say, “we can just take digital photos of living organisms” buddy where are you going to store that jpg that someone can retrieve it flawlessly 50 years from now

"Cowards"? I think that's rudist.

Per wins the banter award 😂😂😂

They are!! What do you mean they "don't have any close living relatives" and "aren't box office enough". Those kind of excuses prove that "deextinction" is just about the hype and cosmetic similarity to a showy animal, not real biological interest 😤

I don't think they should, to be clear, but the lack of ambition is clear

I notice that no one has offered to de-extinct Titanosarcolites. Cowards.

😭😭😭

Right??? Are we not capable as a species of learning???

Argh.

It was! This year we didn't do much as a community but already I'm making plans for next year's 2/2!

Image of two snails on leaf matter. Euglandina tenella (Strebel, 1875) and Helicina sp., with kind permission to MSL to use image from Tadeo De Jesús Esquivel Blanco and Luis Armando Navarro Zarco

🙏Please share🙏
🐌Applications are open for MSL travel grants!🐌
⭐Deadline = 1st March (for travel between 1st June and 30th November)
⭐£500 available for members
⭐£300 available for non-members
malacsoc.org.uk/awards-and-g...

Digital artwork of a dragon head caterpillar (Polyura schreiber) with the many dots on its horned head and chubby body rendered to resemble little stars, a few actually being tiny four-pointed stars. Above its head a partially eclipsed moon is framed between its inner horns, and large four-pointed stars rest on the center of its upper head and hang on either side of its head between its outer horns. More stylized rays and stars radiate out into the edges of the image, rich textured gold against a dark blue framing the green bug's body. The caterpillar is outlined in metallic gold and has fairly realistic face details and feet. Art by Moth Monarch.

🌘 "Starchild" 🌟
Commission for @franzanth.bsky.social & at last another of my Golden Orbits.

Gosh I just really love to measure thingssssss

Timezones mean sometimes I get to stay up til 10pm yelling about the relevance of Euclid and Ptolemy to the measurement of Nipponites mirabilis 🥰