Teaching today in the @morethanadodo.bsky.social seminar room, what better place to teach about natural history & natural history collecting to history undergrads for my first ever class for @ox.ac.uk history faculty! Huge thanks as always to @andy4040.bsky.social for the extra specimen loans!

New article out today with @andy4040.bsky.social on the Liebig Trading Cards in the collection for the #BritishNaturalistsAssociation Country-Side Magazine #TradingCards #NaturalHistory #Ephemera #NewArticleAlert❗️

A natural history collector’s dream haul - over sixty complete Liebig card sets, newly added to the A. Taylor Collection. 🦪 Oysters & fishes 🪲 Strange Insects & Parasites 🦘 Australian Mammals 🌊 Marine Algae 🌴 Strange Trees of the World Each set = six rich chromolithos Tiny teaching tools

Massive thanks also to @gilbertwhites.bsky.social for hosting us, to @andy4040.bsky.social for loaning us some wonderful specimens from his collection, and to @edwinrose.bsky.social and Mary-Ann Constantine (and me 😂) for loaning books and documents.

Our exhibition Curious Minds: Thomas Pennant and Gilbert White launches on the 8th April at @gilbertwhites.bsky.social! We’re delighted that the exhibition will feature objects and images loaned by many organisations (see comments!) Book your place at the launch at [email protected]

Don’t forget to follow our project account @curioustravellers.bsky.social for more information on our project, partners, and team!

The project team are grateful for loans and donations of specimens and images from @nhm-london.bsky.social @andy4040.bsky.social Arader Galleries (NYC), National Library Wales, Houghton Library (Harvard), The Linda Hall Library, & Smithsonian Libraries & Archives.

Images in the above post are of just a few of the specimens in @nhm-london.bsky.social Pennant collections (images (c) the Trustees of the Natural History Museum)

A letter; hand-written and signed by Sir Richard Owen KCB FRMS FRS (from the collections). Richard Owen (1804-1892) was a leading biologist, anatomist and palaeontologist who founded the Natural History Museum in London and famously coined the term ‘Dinosaur’. @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social

A recent search through the collections revealed a couple of specimens that are definitely worth sharing: two hadal amphipods - Bathycallisoma (Scopelocheirus) schellenbergi from an unbelievable 10,047m (32,949 ft) depth in the Kermadec Trench: @nhm-london.bsky.social @stephholtnh.bsky.social