Excursion Report - Oxford Museum 2006

Excursion Report - Oxford Museum of Natural History

October 21^st 2006

The final excursion in our 2006 Summer Programme was to the University of Oxford's Natural History Museum, on 21st October. Thirteen members joined our host Professor Derek Siveter at 10.30 outside the gothic façade of the Museum to begin the visit. We moved directly through into the main building, which dates from 1859 and is a wonderful Victorian edifice. The building has a glazed roof supported by ornate steel pillars garlanded with painted flowers. The building and display cases are little changed and still offer a light and airy space in which to display exhibits. Derek briefly told us about the treasures within the museum including the Dodo, the Swifts (birds, not eminent ex-geologists) in the tower and the Oxfordshire dinosaurs. He then explained the lay-out of the palaeontology displays, so that members could return at their leisure later in the afternoon. As would be expected, many cases contained fabulous examples of fossils etc, as well as fine examples of modern fauna. When the Museum opened to the public at noon we were taken on a privileged visit behind the scenes. First stop was amongst the archives, where librarian Stella Brecknall had laid out original maps drawn up by the father of English geology, William Smith, together with field notebooks written by his nephew John Phillips. Other material from William Buckland and a letter from Charles Darwin kept us fascinated and it was a rare honour to be allowed to leaf through this precious material. We then visited some of the stored collections of fossil material, all beautifully boxed in wooden cabinets with zig-zag runners, and arranged within an ingenious space efficient system. From the walls hung portraits of founding fathers such as Darwin and Linnaeus, and an original map by Murchison was also examined. On to the Arkell Library and a glimpse of the Red Lady from Wales, who’s oxidized bones are actually those of an early male hominid. We ended the visit in Professor Siveter’s office, where he demonstrated on his computer the digital wizardry of his latest research on minute arthropods from Silurian concretions from Herefordshire. We saw fantastic reconstructions of sea spiders, limulus-like crabs and other arthropods measuring just a few millimetres. They were recreated digitally in 3-D from hundreds of photographs taken as the specimens were painstakingly ground away. Derek, his brother David, and their collaborators are leading the field in this type of research technology and have produced incredibly detailed taxonomic information on new and already known species. In effect, the nodules represent lagerstatten (i.e. beds which contain exceptionally preserved fossils). Fabulous stuff!

The day continued with lunch in Oxford and the afternoon was free for the party to shop in town or investigate the quaint Victoriana of the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is to be found attached to the Natural History Museum.

Helen Jones & Andrew Swift