Blog Posts From Brachiopod and Cephalopod collections blog Tagged With cephalopod

Brachiopod awareness at Science Uncovered

Zoe Hughes — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 13:10:25 GMT

At Science Uncovered this Friday I will be putting on my brachiopod hat. I will be showing off a selection of brachiopods from the Museum's collection, ranging in age from 0.5 billion years old to modern specimens still alive in the oceans today.

Lingulid brachiopods alive and well today.

Visitors will be able to see how little some animals have changed in such a huge period of time. I will also have a selection of extinct brachiopods to show the extent of diversity in the Palaeozoic era before the 'great dying' at the end of the Permian period in which around 96% of all marine species were wiped out.

Among the specimens I will have on display will be my favourite brachiopod Torquirhynchia inconstans. Find out why it’s my favourite! I will also bring out the largest brachiopod in our collection and demonstrate the anatomical features that make a brachiopod a brachiopod.

Torquirhynchia inconstans. My favourite brachiopod, but why?

My activity is borne very much from the realisation that many people have no idea what a brachiopod is or quite how amazing they are, so I aim to make people more 'brachiopod aware!' I think that many people have never heard of a brachiopod because they live in environments that most people will never visit.

I will be manning my stand in the Extinction Zone between 17.30 and 19.00. Come and say hello and talk to me about brachiopods!

The cephalopods won’t be ignored though. Sevtlana Nikolaeva will be talking about her research and work with ammonites between 16.00 and 17.30, also in the Extinction Zone.

Come and talk to Svetlana about ammonites this Friday.

Meet our work experience students

Zoe Hughes — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:40:56 GMT

The week before last (30 June - 4 July 2014) I had two enthusiastic work experience students working alongside me in the collections. Below are two short passages that I asked them to write about their time in the Museum.

Zechariah Francis

On my first day I was given a tour of the Museum, including the palaeontology building. The people that work here are very friendly. On my second day I learnt about type and figured specimens and then counted how many of each were in the Davidson collection of type and figured brachiopods. This was so Zoë had an accurate idea of how many were there, and to help her put together a bid for funding for a digitisation project.

An excellent experience being at the Museum was having a tour of the fossil mammal collection. The bones were massive and I was left speechless when I had the privilege to see a fossilised rhino-like animal.

My experience at the Natural History Museum has been memorable; it is an experience I will never forget. I have met dedicated scientists who have helped me understand the world of palaeontology. They have helped build a road which I will follow.

Thomas Miller

Over the past week I have been working in the palaeontology department with the Curator of Fossil Cephalopods and Brachiopods, Zoë Hughes. During this time I have been assigned many interesting activities that have given me a very good idea of what being a curator is like. These included counting the Davidson collection of brachiopods for a project, and cataloguing a large number of Ordovician nautiloids in preparation for a potential visiting researcher. I was particularly privileged to be able to work with the Jim Craig collection of Gault ammonites; photographing them for the Museum – it was also very useful to be able to learn how to use the brand new camera and stand.

One of the Photographs taken by Thomas of a Gault Clay ammonite.

Aside from working, I was also given a tour of the fossil mammal collection by Pip Brewer - this was very enjoyable and also let me see some different specimens to what I am used to working with.

Working in the museum showed me the scale of the collections and also the scale and importance of the work that goes on here. I am very grateful to Zoë and also Martin Munt for giving me this wonderful opportunity.

Huge thanks to both Zechariah and Thomas for all their hard work during the week!

Earth Science Field Trip to Morocco- Day 3. Goulmima: The Invertebrate perspective

Zoe Hughes — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 17:09:58 GMT

Day three was the day I was most excited about. The Palaeontologists and the Mineralogists split up and went to separate places. You can read about what they got up to in the next blog, a guest post from Mike Rumsey. The Palaeontologists were heading to an area known as Goulmima. The reason we were heading there was primarily to explore the fish and ammonite fauna to be found (there are also marine reptiles). These animals are from the Turonian stage of the Late Cretaceous. This means that these fossils are approximately 90 million years old! Being the curator of the fossil cephalopods and a particular fan of ammonites I was very excited!

Before we left our hotel we visited the fossil and mineral shop they had to have a look and see what there was. There were some very impressive large items but I was most impressed by the heteromorphic ammonites and spiny trilobites.

Some of the wonderful ammonites on sale at the hotel.

We left our hotel and drove south, heading towards Goulmima. On the way we stopped in a town called Rich, where we visited another fossil shop. The owner of this particular shop knows the Goulmima area which we were interested in very well, he also had a lot of fossils from the sites there. Knowing that we wouldn’t be spending very long at the site at Goulmima, and also that the Museum is working to expand its collection of ammonites from the region I spent some time having a look for the rarer species not represented in our collections. In the end we came away with some very nice ammonites.

Me searching through a pile of ammonites.

After our detour we continued on the way to Goulmima. The drive there was filled with spectacular scenery as the landscape became more filled with the typical desert scenes you would expect from Morocco. As we got closer we were driving along a river bed with spectacular cliffs and lush vegetation. On arriving we had lunch in the shade under a date tree (more fantastic tuna sandwiches!). During our 300km drive south it had gotten noticeably hotter, I was definitely grateful for my sun hat and factor 50 suncream!

Magnificent landscapes we travelled through on our way south through Morocco. 1 of 3

Landscape 2 of 3

More of the wonderful geology we passed on our drive south 3 of 3.

Once we had eaten our lunch we went to the first of two sites in the Goulmima area known as Asfla 1 (another town nearby). The more adventurous of the group scrambled up a very steep cliff to investigate what could be found. Lower down we found evidence of shell beds containing lots of bivalve shells. After half an hour or so there we had found a few scrappy bits of ammonite and no fish so we got back into the jeeps and headed off to the second site; Asfla 2.

View of site Asfla 1.

The view from site Aslfa 1. Photograph courtesy of Martha Richter.

Can you see my collegues on the cliff at Asfla 1?

On reaching Asfla 2 we hopped out of the jeeps and headed up towards the site. On the way up we found pieces of plesiosaur. Martin found a lovely specimen of an ammonite genus known as Mammites at this site.

Site Asfla 2.

Me and Emma Bernard at Asfla 2.

Our next stop before heading towards a place called Erfoud and our hotel was a small settlement near Goulmima. We were taken here by our guides as the local people make living excavating fossils from the area. We made a couple of stops, one of which being to a man who specialised in collecting the ammonite fauna. I spent another happy few minutes having a look through a pile of ammonites. In the end I came away with a good selection of specimens, some very rare which may never have been found here before!

The village we visited. Photograph courtesy of Martha Richter.

The last stop before our hotel was a brief stop in another fossil shop. As we were now in Erfoud an area with much older Palaeozoic rocks, this was starting to be seen in what the shop was selling, with goniatites and trilobites which are much older alongside the more recent Cretaceous fauna. While we were here Mike, Emma and Helena; the mineralogists met us so we could head to our hotel and a comfortable bed after a long and busy day.

Keep an eye out for the vertebrate perspective on day 3 from Emma Bernard, and a guest post here from Mike Rumsey about what the mineralogists were up to.

Rain, Dinosaurs and Fish on the Isle of Wight.

Zoe Hughes — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:15:00 GMT

Over the weekend as you may have noticed if you follow my Twitter feeds (@NHM_Brachiopoda and @NHM_Cephalopoda) I have been on the Isle of Wight. We arrived on a very wet afternoon on Friday 8 November.

The main reason for our trip was to participate in the Dinosaur Isle Museum's "Blast from the Past" event which gathers local collectors, universities and museums together to talk to the public about palaeontology, fossil collecting and metal detecting.

Me with our display of cephalopods.

Me and my collegues - Dr Martin Munt, Dr Lorna Steel, Dr Christine Stullu-Derrien, Dr Ria Mitchell and Zuzanna Wawrzyniak - had a stall showing the diversity of fossil cephalopods through time and the plant and arthropod fauna of the Rhynie Chert. Lots of people came to talk to us, asking questions about the specimens and bringing their own fossils for us to identify.

On Monday Christine came back to the Museum as she's very busy at the moment but the rest of us stayed on the Isle of Wight to do some fieldwork. We wrapped up warm with lots of layers and waterproofs and braved the weather on Yaverland beach near Sandown. I found some dinosaur ribs and a fish vertebra.

When we went up to Dinosaur Isle that is close by for lunch, we realised our waterproofs had failed and we were all utterly soaked so instead of going back out into the dire weather we were invited to visit the Isle of Wight off-site store to have a look at their collections.

Our group on Yaverland beach getting rather wet and windswept.

Alex Peaker and Martin New of Dinosaur Isle showed us lots of wonderful fossil plants, dinosaurs and invertebrates while Lorna took the opportuinty to have a look at their fossil crocodiles.

On Tuesday the weather was much better and we took a trip to a Pleistocene mammal locality on the east of the island called Saltmead Beach, which is near Newton. Luckily the military firing test zone was not in action that day as we had to cross it in order to get to the beach. After a long walk across a water-logged field and down the beach we finally made it to the site. Lots of bone fragments were found, most likely from bison. These will be passed along to our fossil mammal curator.

Left: Lorna and Zuza looking for Pleistocene bones.

Right: The beach at Saltmead near Newtown.

After lunch we visited an Eocene site known as the insect limestone. Here there were pieces of the limestone strewn on the beach which you can then break open with a hammer. If you are lucky you may find insects such as ants and beetles or even fossil plant remains. In our case, Zuzanna was the lucky one as she found a lovely beetle that our arthropod curator was very excited to recieve for the collection.

Left: Ria breaking up the limestone. Centre: Looking carefully for tiny insects.

Right: The insect limestone.

When we got back to the house Zuzanna started the process of removing the salt from the bison bones we had found. She did this by soaking them in tap water overnight to draw the salt out. In the process, however, a small shore crab emerged from one of the bones! We put it in a tupperware tub (with no lid) with some seaweed from the bone and sea water from the sample bag. In the morning on the way back to the ferry we released him in a suitable pebbly location with seaweed.

Left: The crab we rescued
Right: I'm about to release him!