#nhm london

[arminreindl]

Tyrannotitan at the NHM

[ufonaut]

The New Year's Party at the Natural History Museum, London (31/12/23)

[rozzy0-0]

Ahem, update, this year he had a hat too

[travelling-my-little-pony]

Autumn Leaves has been admiring a carousel.

Outside the Natural History Museum, in London, England.

[birt-art]

I really miss the six months of my master's where I was working in the labs under the Natural History Museum that you could enter via secret doors behind the dinosaur exhibits

[msue0027]

everywhere i go

i see his face

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

My 2017 press release artwork of Cricocosmia (Palaeoscolecida) infested by some parasitic Inquicus (Gnathifera), from the Early Cambrian, for Xiaoya et al (NHM London).

[thylacine-dreams]

The London Natural History Museum’s thylacine is probably one of the more well-known specimens, viewed by hundreds of visitors every day.

I saw him referred to as “Stumpy” somewhere online and I think that nickname suits him.

Many of the NHM’s specimens are very faded and in poor condition. A sign in the display case explains: “The Museum is concerned about the conservation of animals in the natural world and no longer collects skins for taxidermy displays. The specimens in these displays are from the Museum’s historical collection — consequently some are faded or show other signs of age. We feel it is more appropriate to rely on these collections for display, even though they may not fully reflect the natural appearance of the living animal.”

[plural-on-paws]

I see you’re a fellow Falco and Carcharhinus genera member — sweet!

If it is possible, I would like to request either a (female) Eurasian Kestrel or Sicklefin Lemon Shark moodboard: your choice on which!

I do not have many ideas beyond my theriotypes, though. You could potentially incorporate elements of being a Natural History Museum if you would like? (With emphasis on London’s NHM as that is a heart-type as well.) If you go for the shark, you may also want to include blåhaj, a satellotype of mine.

Thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a lovely day!

I hope these are okay! I don't think the museum pics on the shark board are the London NHM but I wanted to get some kind of museum-y stuff ^^'

[kthecritter]

hello and wb :DDD it’s got so excited seeing your stuff on my dashboard again xD

if possible, i’d love to request a phone wallpaper themed around london’s natural history museum? (this is either a placekin or some objectum attraction - i am unsure yet ajdhdje. tho if u could do a version with the otherkin symbol that’d be great! [i’m generally NHMkin])

bonus points if you can incorporate the NHM logo somehow, and the bird gallery :>

thank you so much for your time !! have a fantastic day :DDD

here you go, we hope you enjoy!! OMGGG I LOVE MUSEUMS!!!! we’re gonna go to a science museum next year in Scotland and we’re so so hyped for it xD

[chaotic------neutral]

NHM, London 2024

[pixelplushies]

Two Wolves - currently nameless

The little wolf was purchased from the Natural History Museum London in December 2023. The larger wolf was bought online (after I didn't get a similar one from the London Zoo Shop and regretted it on the same London trip).

They're both by Ravensden, the little one was produced for the NHM and the bigger one is part of their Suma collection.

Bonus pic of the Wolf that Got Away- I think he was the last one in the whole shop and was then out of stock online afterwards! Big fan of his startled expression.

[westenraskiss-ao3]

god, the idea of me sharing things about my writing still makes me uncomfortable, but here's some extra background stuff about Alicent and Rhaenyra's trip to the Natural History Museum in London in chapter 3 of the Hogwarts AU:

I was actually choosing between two museums for the beginning of this chapter: Natural History Museum and the Old Operating Theatre. Obviously, NHM has dinosaurs, so it won out in the end. Plus it looks like Hogwarts on the inside, so.

And here's the Old Operating Theatre Museum that didn't make the cut. (I would've made this at least a little bit magical in the AU. Like maybe there's a secret attic for Wizarding medicine or something, you know. Or perhaps it's got cases full of St. Mungo's surgical supplies on display for young wizards and witches to look at.)

I still think it could be quite fun to put two witches in a museum with all those herbs and surgical equipments, especially with Alicent being so uninterested in general muggle stuff. Maybe I'll use this in a future AU or something, who knows.

Anyway, back to the bits about the museum. Alicent's original plan was to take Rhaenyra to see the T-Rex and all the dinosaur fossils, and to save you time, this is the T-Rex Alicent had in mind:

(Girlie really thought Rhaenyra would be interested in a flightless dragon with short arms. Girlie misjudged the situation.)

And here's the plesiosaur that caught Rhaenyra's eyes:

I think anyone who's been to the NHM would tell you that it's truly an impressive fossil. I think I stood in front of it for a good fifteen minutes the first time I went there, just craning my neck and staring up at the giant thing. And that was before Ammonite (2020) even came out.

Of course, the AU's set somewhere vaguely in the 2000s, so our baby gay Alicent never had the chance to google who Mary Anning was or watch Ammonite on repeat on some streaming service. But I was hoping someone who's seen Ammonite might pick up on the name Lyme Regis and kinda get that little ah, a nod to queer media moment.

Speaking of Lyme Regis, it's a wonderful little place in Dorset. I heard that you can still go there today and go fossil hunting, but I'm not exactly sure how one goes about that.

In a perfect world, Alicent would've loved going down to that coastal town with Rhaenyra, no matter how much she said she didn't want to freeze to death on the pebble beach.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm sure you could've googled all of the stuff I just said, but I'm currently editing chapter five and want to quickly pop on here to share the two museums and give Lyme Regis a shout. Okay, bye!

[misscammiedawn]

I wanted to say thanks for that write up on the depiction of DID and Mr. Robot! You said everything that's been burning in my head for years now after watching. Hearing another system's thoughts on it was something we've been looking for.

Part of our inner world is also part of the NHM in London lol.

Truly and sincerely thank you.

First off, I am delighted to know that we're not alone in having the Natural History Museum as host to a segment of inner world. Would love to know which exhibit/area you see when you visit, though no obligation to respond. We know that these things can be deeply personal.

The show may not strike with every system but no two plural folx are going to have the same connections and attachments and comforts and that's 100% okay. For those who share our affection for Mr. Robot I am glad you get to enjoy the show and our ramblings on it.

Wishing you and your system well and thank you again for the ask. You've no idea how much feedback comforts and encourages.

Asks are always open.

-

Post the asker is referring to in the question, btw:

Also... have some random rambles about Mr. Robot in a readmore, because I feel like typing a bunch.

-

Also, because it gives us an opening to talk about it. Have some random Robot thoughts:

Mr. Robot is and remains my favorite show. I had started typing "our" favorite and got a sharp rejection so shall use singular pronouns. It has its issues, the use of the term "real" for instance, but with good faith a lot of it can vanish. Not all. But most.

I've been thinking about things a lot more since writing the essay and there are things I wish I had spent longer discussing. For instance during the portion where I wrote about how Coney Island represents a safety in nostalgia, a fortress for the Alderson siblings to hide in their treasured childhood memories; I didn't mention that both Trenton and Mobley use their own nostalgia as their hacker aliases with Trenton being where she lived when young and DJ Mobley clearly being someone Mobley found joy in at a younger age.

Similarly Hot Carla's name is selected because of a hair dresser who validated her gender identity and sheltered her when her parents were abusive. Whiterose's hacker alias is the last moment her life could have been the "good future" that she envisioned and worked so hard to force into reality.

I do like that pretty much every character who has an alias picks their alias as an identity forged in positive memories. Elliot clearly did with Mr. Robot being the store where he and his dad were friends and his other alias (The Gentleman) is a reference to The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie, a movie he and Darlene watched every year that became the entire iconography for the fsociety movement.

If I were to ever do another Mr. Robot essay I think it would be on the way each character insists on living in the past in order to escape their present and how that relates to the way trauma invades the present. Not going to promise that, though. We're already snowed under with our Loop and Beatrice essays.

I think that can be one of the big failings of the show, actually, especially for those watching it as it aired. The show is deeply ingrained in the perspectives of characters who have critically distorted beliefs on reality and the show doesn't really start laying down objective reality until late season 3 after the cyber bombings.

Someone watching the show for the first time can watch Elliot's edgelord rants about "Fuck Society" and think that the show believes these things rather than its main character and we do not get the show delivering the message that it's small minded and childish (which, given that Elliot is stuck in trauma time and perpetually reliving a horrifically abusive childhood he cannot fully understand because he won't allow himself to remember clearly, is exactly what he is) until Irving and Price each spell it out to Mr. Robot in S3E7/9 or Whiterose outright calls Elliot on it in their final confrontation.

I adore the show for its patience and how it tells such an emotional and complicated story over its 45 hour runtime but I do understand people watching the first hour, getting the wrong idea about where the journey is going and opting out.

Hell I understand a system going in for DID representation and not having the patience to stick around the show's Fight Club pastiche era before starting to get to the meat of things.

But hey. I gave the show a shot and can't go back now. I love it too darned much.

Also because I don't want to start another thread on it, I do want to say that the show is truly frustrating in how it depicts economic collapse for society and yet none of the characters are ever impacted by it.

Darlene is homeless throughout the show, spare her stint living in an FBI safe house and she has no job through the show's run. She is never hurting for money, even when the banking system of the world collapses. She likely is stealing but it's frustrating that we only hear about the financial ruin in the periphery. We learn of the eviction of Elliot's neighbors spare for the kind older man who takes care of Flipper but Elliot himself can buy entire new computers on a whim and go months between jobs or spend a season in prison and not be impacted.

Like the show depicts the world going into a major decline during the economic crisis and it's clear by Season 4 that the show is venting frustration that when the banking system failed in 2008 the ones responsible were not harmed at all and it was the public who suffered and things just went back to how it was in time; it's just... every character is living comfortably in New York and Darlene is the closest we have to a "poor" character.

But that's a rant we have on every show. Poverty doesn't really exist in television. You watch a show like Ted Lasso and everyone is a millionaire. Even the Kit Manager (Nate, not Will) has parents who own a home, sent him to higher education and gave him private violin lessons. Kit Manager salary is about £25-50 per year, even for a Premier League Team.

...but my discomfort with how poverty is never represented on TV is just a random rant and I'm going way off topic.

I'll stop rambling now.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Mystery mounds reveal the history of water on Mars

Thousands of mounds and hills in Mars' barren northern plains are full of clay minerals, providing evidence that the rocks here were once soaked with water, a new study reveals. These mounds are all that is left of a landscape, roughly the size of the U.K., that has been almost entirely eroded away.

A researcher at London's Natural History Museum, Dr. Joe McNeil, with collaborators at The Open University, used high-resolution images and compositional data captured by orbiters to understand the geology of the mounds. The findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The team discovered that the mounds, which are up to half a kilometer tall, are the remnants of ancient highlands which retreated by hundreds of kilometers after erosion wore away the terrain billions of years ago. These actions played a key role in shaping the Martian landscape which divides the planet's low-lying northern hemisphere from its higher southern hemisphere.

The mounds are made of layered deposits containing clay minerals, formed through water interacting with rock over millions of years. These clay layers are sandwiched between older, non-clay layers below and younger, non-clay layers above, marking distinct geological events in Mars' history.

Dr. McNeil said, "These mounds are incredibly exciting because they preserve the complete history of water in this region within accessible, continuous rocky outcrops. They are a prime location for future missions aimed at uncovering whether Mars ever had an ocean and whether life could have existed there."

The study also reveals that the mounds are geologically linked to the nearby plains of Oxia Planum, which the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover is set to launch in 2028 looking for signs of past and present life. By piecing together Mars' ancient past, scientists are uncovering the story of a planet that may have once been capable of supporting life.

"Mars is a model for what the early Earth might have looked like, as its lack of plate tectonics means that much of its ancient geology is still in place," Joe continues. "As more missions visit the red planet, the more we'll be able to dig into our own planet's history to work out how life began."

As part of the NHM's mission to transform the science of natural history, our research is focused on providing solutions from and for nature. This study is part of our Planetary Origins and Evolution research theme which explores the origins and systems underpinning the evolution of the Earth, its moon and planetary systems.

IMAGE: Two prominent mounds, rising hundreds of metres above the surrounding lowlands, display bright regions rich in clay minerals. Credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS, NASA/JPL/MSSS/The Murray Lab

[pers-books]

New wasp species named after Doctor Who villain

‘Dalek’ wasps are among 815 new species described by Natural History Museum scientists in 2023

Nilima Marshall - 4 hours ago

Fourteen newly discovered species of wasps have been named after the villainous Daleks from Doctor Who to mark the 60th anniversary of the popular sci-fi series.

The insects, which bear the genus “Dalek”, are among the 619 new wasp species described this year by London’s Natural History Museum (NHM).

An alien warrior race of mutants, the Daleks are the formidable bad guys in BBC’s long-running TV show.

I thought it was a good name for a genus and a bit of fun having been a big fan of Doctor Who in my early years

Dr John Noyes, NHM

One particular species of wasp from Costa Rica called Dalek nationi also honours Terry Nation, the Welsh screenwriter and novelist who created the mutant race that terrified children for the past six decades.

Dr John Noyes, scientific associate at the NHM, said: “I thought it was a good name for a genus and a bit of fun having been a big fan of Doctor Who in my early years.”

A total of 815 new species were described by NHM scientists in 2023, including a 407-million-year-old parasitic fungus named after children’s author Beatrix Potter.

Potteromyces asteroxylicola was discovered infecting the roots of ancient plants and is thought to be the earliest disease-causing fungus ever discovered.

The researchers said they wanted to honour Potter’s reputation as a dedicated mycologist – someone who studies and works with fungi.

Dr Christine Strullu-Derrien, scientific associate at the NHM, who helped identify the new Potter fungus, said: “Naming this important species after Beatrix Potter seems a fitting tribute to her remarkable work and commitment to piecing together the secrets of fungi.”

Highlights also include fossil remains of a new dinosaur species found on the Isle of Wight, which was named Vectipelta barretti after NHM Professor Paul Barrett who worked there for two decades.

It is first the dinosaur discovered on the island for 142 years.

Other notable discoveries also include fossil remains of a giant penguin called Kumimanu fordycei – believed to be the largest penguin that ever lived – and nine new species of bristle worms including two bone-eating worms.

The researchers also report new species being discovered in “unremarkable” urban environments, including a stick insect called Micropodacanthus tweedae that was found on the side of a bin in Australia, and a moth that was located in Ealing, west London, called Tachystola mulliganae, which turned out be a new species native to Western Australia.

T. mulliganae is named after Barbara Mulligan, a lifelong moth enthusiast who discovered the species.

Mark Sterling, a scientific associate at NHM, described the finding as “real coup for citizen science”.

The new species descriptions contributed to the 722 new research papers released by the NHM over the past 12 months.