NEWS FROM THE SECTOR: Headline stories from the web

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[LAST UPDATED 4th February 2012]

Museums hear fate after 29 bid for share of £60m Renaissance money

24/01/12: From The Guardian's Culture Cuts blog...
Winners include Brighton, Birmingham, Oxford and Cambridge. Losers include Sheffield which warns of job losses and a fall in exhibition standards. Arts Council England has named 16 organisations as winning bidders for a share of £60m Renaissance money which is given to the nation's museums... READ MORE

24/01/12: From the Museums Association: Maurice Davies blog...
Today’s announcement of major museum funding from Arts Council England (ACE) is generally sound. It’s reassuring that by applying strict criteria and a transparent process ACE has arrived at a pretty well-balanced portfolio of major partner museums - with one or two exceptions... READ MORE

Lost Charles Darwin fossils rediscovered in cabinet

16/01/12: From BBC News...
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet. [View the BGS Hooker slide collection] The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK...READ MORE

Stolen meteorite recovered in New Mexico

13/01/12: From the Claims Journal via the Global Museum...
A meteorite that landed in Russia in the 1940s and was recently stolen from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque has been located. After the meteorite went missing, the museum contacted an association of meteorite collectors and a Missouri man responded that he had bought it for $1,700...READ MORE

Dorchester Dinosaur on the move

12/01/12: From Dorchester Dorset blog...
Dorchester will get its first television appearance of 2012 when it is featured on Channel 5 show The Removal Men later this year. The programme will follow one of the most unusual assignments ever undertaken by removal specialists Pickfords, when they were tasked with transporting a life-sized model triceratops belonging to the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester... READ MORE

How to get a fossil named after you

09/01/12: From NaturePlus: Curator of Micropalaeontology's blog...
According to Giles Miller: The easiest way is to make friends with a Palaeontologist who is good at discovering things and is looking for names to call their new finds. A slightly harder way is to find a new fossil species and give it to a Palaeontologist who names it after you.  (In case you were wondering, it is against the rules to call new discoveries after yourself). Just before Christmas I had a visit from my old friend Stuart Sutherland from Canada who named a fossil after me back in 1994. I have four fossils named after me and have named some after others too. Here are the stories behind each of them... READ MORE

Mineral theft from Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

03/01/12: From GCG JISC Mailing LIst...
On December 10, 2011, there was an early-morning break-in at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Six specimens were stolen from a display case in their Mineral Hall. These included a 2.9-carat faceted benitoite, a large specimen of benitoite and neptunite, two gold nuggets and two specimens of crystallized gold...READ MORE (pdf file opens in new window)

Top 10 science and nature 2011 news stories from the NHM

27/12/11: From the Natural History Museum....
From a rare dual-sex butterfly and an exciting new addition to the human family tree, to a striking electric-blue lobster and a new horned dinosaur, here are the top 10 favourite 2011 science and nature news stories from the Natural History Museum website....READ MORE

New geological discovery paves the way for further insight into the transport of Stonehenge rocks

From NMW News...
A new paper in Archaeology in Wales, produced by Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University and Dr Richard Bevins of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales confirms, for the first time, the exact origin of some the rhyolite debitage found at Stonehenge. This work could now lead to important conclusions about how stones were transported from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge...READ MORE

130 million-year-old Iguanodon dinosaur bone found in Sunderland back garden

13/12/11: From Culture 24...
A "bizarre" bone from a dinosaur which walked the earth 130 million years ago has gone on display after being spotted among tree roots in a Sunderland back garden...READ MORE

From Tyne and Wear Museums...
A dinosaur bone has been found in a Sunderland back garden, thought to be from a dinosaur called Iguanodon which grew up to 10m long...READ MORE

New horned dinosaur hidden for 90 years at NHM

6/12/11: From the Natural History Museum...
A new species of horned dinosaur has been discovered after being unnoticed in the Natural History Museum collections for more than 90 years, scientists report today...READ MORE

NHM Treasures Gallery to display Archaeopteryx

20/11/11: From the Natural History Museum...
The fossil that confirmed Darwin’s theory of evolution, Archaeopteryx, will be displayed for the first time in a new gallery called Treasures, opening at the Natural History Museum in November 2012...READ MORE

Archaeopteryx - missing link between birds and dinosaurs comes to National Museum Cardiff

18/10/11: From the National Museum of Wales...
Was Archaeopteryx a bird or a dinosaur? So far only 10 specimens have ever been found (plus one isolated feather), all from the same area of Germany. Now one of these original specimens known as “The Phantom” (because it was known about but never seen) will be on display in the UK for the first time. This is an exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Archaeopteryx, the famous feathered fossil known as the ‘missing-link’ between dinosaurs and birds...READ MORE

14/10/11: From Culture 24...
The fossil that confirmed Darwin’s theory of evolution, Archaeopteryx, will be displayed for the first time in a new gallery called Treasures, opening at the Natural History Museum in November 2012...READ MORE

NHM Archaeopteryx "is the specimen to refer to"

3/10/11: From the Natural History Museum...
The spectacular Archaeopteryx fossil specimen at the Natural History Museum has been declared the official representative of the Archaeopteryx lithographica species, scientists report today... Experts at the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) ruled that the Museum specimen, which shows the almost complete skeleton of the magpie-sized creature with imprints of the wing and tail feathers, should be the type specimen, rather than a fossil of a imprint of a single feather that previously held the title...READ MORE

From the ICZN...
After five years of controversy, the fossil bird Archaeopteryx lithographica is to be officially represented by the spectacular specimen held by the Natural History Museum in London. This changes the primary reference, or type specimen, from an impression of a small fossil feather to the complete bones and feathers in a large limestone slab. The ruling is announced by theInternational Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in its latest publication, out today...READ MORE