Experiencing Volunteering at St Fagans as part of the Our Museum Project Loveday Williams, 22 November 2012 5th November saw the Our Museum Project Partners arrive at St Fagans to experience a day in the life of a volunteer at the museum. Luck was on our side, the weather was with us and we were all ready for a fantastic day.The St Fagans Our Museum project has been going from strength to strength. The Initiative is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and aims at bringing museums and communities together. The St Fagans project hopes to do this by building a community of volunteers at the museum.Over the past year the museum has been working with a dedicated group of Community Partners who are supporting us on the project. They have been involved in decision making every step of the way and are now fully embedded into the Our Museum initiative and the project at St Fagans.To give the Community Partners a better sense of what it is like to volunteer at the museum, we felt that a day spent on site, carrying out different activities alongside staff would work well. So, we set about preparing an action packed day!Everyone was extremely keen and it was felt that this would be a great way of getting to know each other in an informal setting.So, the morning of 5th November saw us all trekking up to the Castel Garden’s where we spent a busy morning digging up the old rose bed in preparation for re planting with Peter and Gareth from the Gardening Team. The sun was shining and we all had a fantastic time. Everyone entered into the competitive spirit as we were split into two groups to dig the patch, the aim being to meet in the middle.After a fascinating talk from Owain Rhys on the recent Refugee House project we enjoyed a delicious lunch before venturing out on site again with Ian Daniel, Steve Burrow and Janet Wilding. Up to the Celtic Village for an afternoon of clay making, daubing and copper beating.We all really enjoyed the activities and got thoroughly muddy in the process. Through discussions with staff the Community Partners were able to see how the Our Museum Project will fit into the exciting re development of St Fagans.Thank you to everyone involved for making the day such a great success! Hats off to the volunteers!
Last chance for Animal & Plant Games Peter Howlett, 21 November 2012 Last chance to have a go at the Animal and Plants Games TrailThe Animal and Plants Games Trail is in its last remaining weeks at National Museum Cardiff. Look for the Cheetah coin symbol in our Lower and Upper Natural History galleries, Evolution of Wales, Natural World and Origins galleries to follow it.You can also follow the trail by picking up one of the colourful Animal and Plant Games leaflets. They can be found on a stand near the entrance to the Evolution of Wales gallery, near the top of the stairs to the restaurant. Alternatively, you can ask in the Clore Discovery Centre.But hurry, the trail will be taken down in the New Year and the leaflets are running out fast!Animals and plants have to compete every day to survive. Strength, size, speed and agility can all help give them an advantage over competitors. Along the trail you can discover specimens of record breaking plants and animals such as: the famously fast Cheetah, the small but strong Dung Beetle, deadly Rosary Peas and record breaking cones from the Big Cone Pine!
Describing new worms Julian Carter, 21 November 2012 Marine scientist Teresa Darbyshire has just re-discribed a new species of Polychaete (commonly called marine bristleworms). Unfortunately, a recent description of the new species, Dysponetus joeli (Olivier et al. 2012) used damaged specimens and errors were made. This is because Polychaetes react notoriously badly to being handled roughly which is usually unavoidable with large marine surveys. Collected specimens are often in very bad condition by the time they are identified. However, hand collected specimens by Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales from survey work done in 2009 in the Isles of Scilly were found to be the same species but in very good condition. Using these specimens and comparing them with the original specimens from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle Paris, enabled the errors to be corrected. A re-description and revised species key have now been published - http://goo.gl/uAUqM.
A new species of fly for Britain Peter Howlett, 19 November 2012 A species of fly new to Britain has been found from the Wye Valley by scientist Adrian Plant, working at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. Platypalpus nigricoxa is thought to be a boreo-alpine relict (left behind when ice retreated at the end of the last glacial period). Apart from the Wye valley, it is only known from the extreme north of Scandinavia, the Kola peninsula in northern Russia and some mountains in eastern Europe.
Important Fossil Turtle discovered after being lost for 150 years Cindy Howells, 18 November 2012 Chaning Pearce [Image (c) Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery] The fossil turtle at National Museum Cardiff, its significance previously unknown Sir Richard Owen in 1855 by Maull & Polyblank. Founding father of the National Museum of History, London and inventor of the word 'dinosaurs' In 1842 the famous naturalist and palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen described four new fossil turtle specimens from the Purbeck Limestone (Lower Cretaceous) of Dorset. One of these has always been in Natural History Museum in London, but the other three were held in private collections, and after 1842, effectively vanished for 150 years! One of the missing three was discovered in the Natural History Museum several years ago by Dr Andrew Milner whilst studying turtles and other reptiles, but the whereabouts of the other two remained a mystery. However, further research led him to the National Museum Cardiff where a fossil turtle in the collections was positively identified as one of Owen's missing specimens. This fossil turtle - originally named Chelone obovata - was owned by Joseph Chaning Pearce (1811-1847), who worked as a doctor in Bath until his early death at the age of 37. He built up one of the largest private collections of fossils outside London and had set aside part of his house as a private museum. After his death his family kept the small museum until at least 1886 when they moved to Kent. The collection is next heard of in 1915, when much of it was bought by the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, along with its original catalogue. Dr Milner searched the collections at Bristol Museum but did not find the Chaning Pierce specimen, and assumed that it was destroyed in 1940 when incendiary bombs landed on the exhibition hall of the Bristol Museum during the Second World War. However, in 2008 he found the original hand-written catalogue, and on page 32 is the record for Fossil no.12 Chelone obovata with a pencil annotation - Sent to Cardiff Museum, 3rd March 1933. Dr Milner contacted the Department of Geology, National Museum Cardiff, and it transpired that in 1933 a Purbeck turtle shell was registered, although we had very little information about it. The specimen had been on display in the Evolution of Wales exhibition since 1993 as it is very well preserved and fairly complete. Richard Owen's original description in 1842 describes this turtle as the 'type specimen' of the species Chelone obovata - meaning that this is the specimen against which all others should be checked. Although there were no illustrations, he published a very detailed and accurate description. This description matches the specimen in National Museum Cardiff exactly, and there is no doubt that it is the same specimen. A recent investigation shows that the turtle now belongs in the genus Hylaeochelys and the species latiscutata. This specimen has significant historical interest as it was collected prior to 1840, and described by Sir Richard Owen - the man who invented the name 'dinosaur'. The details of the rediscovery have been published in Morphology and Evolution in Turtles, edited by D. B. Brinkman et al., in the series - Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology.
