The differences between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, our own species, have been widely debated since the discovery of the remains of Homo neanderthalensis in the 19th Century.  Professor Chris Stringer, one of the Museum's leading research scientists from the Department of Palaeontology, is a specialist on the origins and variation of humans, their ancestors and their relatives.  In particular, he has worked for many years on Neanderthals.

One characteristic of Neanderthals that captures both public and scientific imagination is their different physical appearance, having pronounced brow ridges on the skull, a prognathous face, wide nose and a stongly-built body with short legs.  It has traditionally been argued that Neanderthals have relatively larger sinuses as a response to living in cold climates - they are know to have lived in Europe during periods of lower temperatures - the ice ages.  The traditional argument has been that this characteristic warmed the air as it was breathed in.

However, new research published in the Journal of Human Evolution from Todd Rae from the University of Roehampton, Thomas Koppe from the University of Griefswald, Germany, and Chris Stringer, NHM, suggests that the range of sinus size for Neanderthals was in the same proportion to body size as that of European Homo sapiens.  They also argue that the normal response of mammal species in cold climates is actually to develop smaller sinuses.  Their conclusion is that the differences between ourselves and Neanderthals for this characteristic can be explained simply by genetic drift - the random genetic changes that occur in different populations and species over time - and not as a response to their environment.

Rae, T. C., T. Koppe and C. Stringer (2011). "The Neanderthal face is not cold adapted." Journal of Human Evolution 60(2): 234-239. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.10.003

At the core of the Museum's scientific work lies taxonomy: the description, classification and naming of species.  This science is the foundation for all the biological sciences - if we cannot accurately describe the organism, the biological research that we do will not be reliable.  Species are essential concepts in describing diversity and exploring evolution - the Museum's collections and research centre on taxonomy, but integrate it with all sorts of other scientific approaches.

Taxonomy is published in the scientific literature in a number of ways - individual species results are published increasingly in short papers, sometimes online.  However, there is great value in ambitious works that cover whole groups of organisms - it allows all members of the group to be compared in a systematic way and new ideas and conclusions on diversity and evolution explored.

The final part of Dr Norman Robson’s Hypericum monograph was published in Phytotaxa. This an important monograph of a species-rich flowering plant genus; Hypericum (approximately 480 species) is one of 100 plant genera which together represent 22% of angiosperm (flowering plant) diversity. 

A genus is a classification group for a number of individual closely related species. Hypericum is a genus of flowering plant species that is worldwide in distribution and familar as a garden plant in the UK and some species have been used in the past in herbal treatments. (The name St   John’s Wort is commonly used for these plants.) A New Zealand species, Hypericum gramineum, is shown below.

The entire work comprises 1,247 pages in 11 parts, the culmination of 27 years of work and more than 50 years of research by Dr Robson on this genus. The editorial in Phytotaxa states that “The size of such genera means that complete monographic treatments to account for species diversity are time-consuming, costly and labour-intensive. Consequently, the species-level taxonomy of most such groups is poorly known [and this] presents a substantial barrier both to the goal of completing the global inventory and to understanding the evolution of the diversity they contain. Hypericum is now a notable exception to this problem”

Phytotaxa 4: 1–258

Life in Cambrian seas, between 488 and 542 million years ago, was diverse and often very different from more recent organisms.  The rocks of the Burgess Shales in the Canadian Rockies have preserved incredible organisms, including the free-swimming Anomalocaris (see image below) 

Research on this fauna has been active for many years, with public interest stimulated by the writing of Stephen Jay Gould in his 1989 book Wonderful Life.

Dr Greg Edgecombe from the Museum's Palaeontology Department will host Dr Allison Daley, who has been awarded a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Research Council. Allison will join the museum for two years (2011-2012) to work with Greg on the evolution and ontogeny (development) of anomalocaridids.

Previously unstudied material of Anomalocaris and related taxa from the Burgess Shale housed at the Royal Ontario Museum will be a particular focus of this study, including a geometric description of shape changes in the more robust body parts through the course of development. New collections from the Cambrian of Australia will also be documented, and all material used to refine the evolutionary classification of anomalocaridids within the arthropod stem-group.

Charles Darwin is best known as an evolutionary biologist but he also had significant success as a geologist.  His first three scientific books after his account of the voyage of the Beagle explored the geology of coral reefs, volcanic islands and South America: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842); Geological Observations of Volcanic Islands (1844); and Geological Observations on South  America (1846).

Dr Brian Rosen, a Scientific Associate in the NHM Department of Zoology, gave an invited public lecture, hosted by the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) in their ‘Distinguished Lecture Series’ in November 2010, entitled ‘Red or Blue? Darwin's Bermuda Dilemma and his Enduring Subsidence Theory of Coral Reefs’, in which he discussed Darwin's ideas and conclusions.

Darwin's subsidence theory of the origin of coral atolls was based on the idea that the world's ocean floors as a whole were subsiding, and that atolls had developed as coral growth kept pace with sea level on the sinking foundations of former volcanoes. The sheer scale and simplicity of Darwin's idea was reflected in his famous coral reef map, on which he shaded atolls and most other oceanic reefs in blue (inferring subsidence), and most reefs elsewhere in red (inferring uplift or stability).

Darwin's theory was initially acclaimed but over time it seemed too revolutionary for many - alternative ideas such as sea level changes were preferred.  However, by the mid twentieth century, it became clear that the reef deposits of most atolls did indeed extend hundreds of metres beneath their surfaces - far deeper than can be explained by glacial sea level changes alone. 

We know now that atolls do form because islands sink gradually as a  consequence of tectonic plate movement.  While Darwin was correct about  the subsidence, tectonic plate movement and sinking as a reason was not proposed until 1912, althougth this was hotly contested until scientific explanation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Although Darwin did not visit Bermuda, he included it in his coral reef book. Bermuda's reefs - being essentially ring-like in arrangement, and with a central lagoon - are atoll-like, but for other reasons Darwin was equivocal about whether it was a true atoll, so he left it uncoloured on his reef map. In his lecture Brian Rosen attempted to resolve Darwin's dilemma, based on the fact that the sea levels at Bermuda have fluctuated over time.

Samples from the Moon come either from lunar landing missions - the US Apollo or Soviet Luna sample return missions - or from lunar meteorites.  The Moon's craters show a history of impacts by smaller space bodies that, when they have collided with the Moon, have flung Moon rock into space. 

Some of this material has eventually fallen to the surface of the Earth as lunar meteorites, although these have only been recognised as such since 1982 when some unusual meteorites were compared with rocks retrieved by lunar missions. Over 130 meteorites have now been recognised as of lunar origin.

Scientists from the Museum's meteorite research group, Professor Sara Russell and Anton Kearsley, have collaborated with partners from London University's UCL and Birkbeck College to study four lunar regolith breccia meteorites that provide sampling of the lunar surface from regions of the Moon that were not visited by the US and Soviet missions. They used equipment in the Museum's analytical laboratories to show that these meteorites represent impact melts formed from rocks of compositions distinct from those sampled by the Apollo missions - there is considerable variability in rock types across the surface of the moon.

JOY K H, Crawford I A, RUSSELL S S & KEARSLEY A T (2010) Lunar meteorite regolith breccias: An in situ study of impact melt composition using LA-ICP-MS with implications for the composition of the lunar crust. Meteoritics and Planetary Science 45: 917-946. DOI: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2010.01067.

The NHM has a strong record in scientific research on parasitic worms, particularly evolution and identification, with wide international collaboration.  Parasitic worms can cause serious health effects in humans and other organisms, so scientific understanding is essential for effective control.

The research groups produce many scientific papers every year, but two produced in 2008 have just been recognised as being especially influential in the subject, having been mentioned ("cited") most frequently as being of importance by other scientists in their publications.

Dr Peter Olson (Zoology) recently received recognition for the “Top Cited Article 2008-2010” from Parasitology International for an invited review paper on Hox genes and parasitic flatworms. (Hox genes control part of the sequence of development of animals from egg to adult) The paper reviews the history of work on Hox genes in the phylum Platyhelminthes, introduces new data from the model tapeworm Hymenolepis, and sets the stage for how the study of developmental genes can inform a series of outstanding questions in the evolution of the parasitic forms.

Olson PD. 2008. Hox genes and the parasitic flatworms: New opportunities, challenges and lessons from the free-living. Parasitology International 57, 8-17.

Dr Rod Bray (Scientific Associate Zoology) is similarly an author on the Top Cited Article 2008-2010, this time in the International Journal for Parasitology. The paper presents the accumulated evidence for a major change in the classifiation of the orders of the Class Cestoda (tapeworms).

The old order Pseudophyllidea, which included tetrapod parasites, such as the common human tapeworm Diphyllobothrium latum, and fish parasites, such as the freshwater pest species Bothriocephalus acheilognathi, is separated into two orders. The fish parasites are included in the order Bothriocephalidae and the tetrapod parasites now make up the order Diphyllobothriidea. These groups have long been thought to be distinct - but closely related - and probably monophyletic (arising from one common evolutionary ancestor). 

However, classifications based on molecular data (DNA) from several sources indicate that these groups are polyphyletic (arising from several different evolutionary origins, and therefore not a natural group in evolutionary terms). The conclusion from the molecular results has been backed up by both new and previously reported morphological and biological information. Latest evidence suggests that the Diphyllobothriidea is closest to the unsegmented ‘primitive’ tapeworms, but the Bothriocephalidea is sister to the ‘higher’ tapeworm orders.

Kuchta, R., Scholz, T., Brabec, J. and Bray, R.A. (2008). Suppression of the tapeworm order Pseudophyllidea (Platyhelminthes: Eucestoda) and the proposal of two new orders, Bothriocephalidea and Diphyllobothriidea. International Journal for Parasitology, 38, 49-55. doi:10.1016/j.ijpara.2007.08.005.

Dr Paul Williams from the Museum's Department of Entomology has taken on the role of chair of the Bumblebee specialist group of the Species Survival Commission (SSC), an initiative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The SSC is a science-based network of volunteer experts from almost every country of the world, working to provide information and advice on biodiversity conservation, the value of species and their role in ecosystem health,  function and services, and their support for human livelihoods.

Paul is a world expert on bumblebee taxonomy and identification, producing scientific research papers and public resources.  He is also a Trustee of the UK Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Dr Michael Dixon, Director of the Natural History Museum (NHM), and Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), have just signed an agreement on the NHM joining the CBD's Consortium of Scientific Partners on Biodiversity.

The CBD is the focus in the UN system for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, first agreed in 1992.  It has made a major difference to the way in which biodiversity is monitored, conserved and used in many parts of the world since then. 192 countries are parties to the CBD, and they held their tenth conference in Nagoya, Japan at the end of 2010.

This meeting reviewed progress in reaching the 2010 targets for conserving biodiversity, but it is clear that there is no slowing of the rate of biodiversity loss on a global scale.  Biodiversity is not only valuable in its own right, but provides essential services in terms of food, environment, medicine and other human needs, so substantial long-term loss is of major concern.

There is an increasing sense of urgency to address threats to biodiversity and the Nagoya meeting secured agreement on a new strategy looking foward to 2020, and on a number of other issues.   One of these was a new protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources, which will be important in influencing the development and collaborative use of museum collections such as the NHM.

The Consortium is a group of major biodiversity institutions that are committed to collaborate with the CBD.  Its purpose is to mobilise "the expertise and experience of these institutions in order to  implement education and training activities to support developing  countries that are building scientific, technical and policy skills in  the area of biodiversity"

Current members are

• The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
• The Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de France
• The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
• The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
• The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
• The National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
• The Mexican Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources
• The Higashiyama Botanical Gardens, City of Nagoya
• Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh
• The National Institute of Biological Resources
• The Missouri Botanical Gardens
• Joint Nature Conservation Committee
• The Natural History Museum of the United Kingdom
• The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity