Saturday 13 June 2015

Grant Museum of Zoology

Most visitors to London, who are interested in the natural world, flock to the Natural History  Museum, yet on the corner of Gower Street and University Street is the Grant Museum of Zoology, the last university zoological museum in London
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It doesn't have a plaster cast of a Pennsylvanian diplodocus or a near complete stegosaurs, and is considerably smaller than it's more famous counterpart on Cromwell Road.
But it does have many interesting and fascinating items on display, including a hippo skull:


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A fascinating boa constrictor skeleton:
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A cast of an archaeopteryx fossil:
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And a skeleton of a Thylacines (Tasmanian Tiger), which become extinct in 1936:
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Although some of the displays are just bizarre, including a jar of pickled moles:
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Yet the most interesting and fascinating thing is the Micraium, a collection of over 2000 of the universities slides, backlit by light boxes:
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A fascinating and clever feature which hopefully other Natural History Museums might emulate.