A few months ago, the geology collection manager discovered a gun in her collection. Happily, it was no cause for emergency. This was not a modern gun by any means, but an old flintlock pistol broken into four large pieces. What was it doing in a natural…

Triceratops, or literally: three-horned face, an iconic dinosaur. Once upon a time, in 2013, researchers from Naturalis made a special discovery. In Wyoming (America) they found the remains of several Triceratopses. Three more expeditions followed and over…

Becky is museum preparator. Many different tasks fall under this umbrella: cleaning whale bones, preparing study skins of birds and animals, and repairing broken geological samples, for example. However, of all the tasks I do, the most relaxing is washing…

Every now and then I am invited to do a special after hours event. Usually this is some kind of live preparation demonstration, the type I used to do regularly in LiveScience in our old museum (and will do again after our new building opens!). I really…

The story behind the biggest Neptune's cup in the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center That’s right - this is a story about an animal big enough to sit in . It might be hard to comprehend when you look at it, but the Neptune’s cup ( Cliona patera…

Recently we worked on a rare specimen, a male Northern bottlenose whale, Hyperoodon ampullatus . This specimen is from October 1946 and was found on the island of Terschelling. Bottlenose whales are rare in our collection because they do not occur in the…

How a process that is a problem for our whale bones, can be of great value in forensic anthropology. A tale about adipocere, otherwise known as corpse wax. Before a decedent whale can be stored in our collection, it has to be completely clean and stripped…

The first thing that happens when you start any new project at a museum is the literature search. How have other museums dealt with the issues that you are about to be surrounded by? After doing all this research and figuring out what would be the best…

Many and more things can be examined form bones. In one of the early blogs, I looked closely at some of the strange bone issues we came across while cleaning dolphin skeletons. As the project continued, we see bone deformities so regularly that I started…

Whenever the whale team goes to a work on a specimen recently washed up, we know we have a rather disgusting challenge in front of us. One of the trickiest things when removing the many pounds of flesh is to be careful not to lose the tiny pelvic bones.…

Ever since there have been flowers, there have been insects to pollinate these flowers. Bees are rewarded by the plant with food; the nectar and pollen from the flowers. They need it for energy and that is why you always see lots of bees flying around in…

The weather is getting better and more and more flowers are blossoming. For the bumblebees this means: work, work, work! Some bumblebee species, such as the common carder bee, can drink from many different types of flowers with their long tongues. However,…

As of January 1st, 2019, Naturalis researcher Dr. Anne S. Schulp (1974) will start as professor in vertebrate palaeontology at Utrecht University, for 2 days a week. He is currently researcher in vertebrate palaeontology at Naturalis Biodiversity Center,…

Behind the scenes, hard work is being done on the Camarasaurus: Naturalis' iconic sauropod. Do you remember it standing in our old museum? It stood on the first floor, sticking his neck through the ceiling and looking into the eyes of our visitors on the…