Cambridge Museum of Zoology. August 2018
Leatherback Turtle, Dermochelys coriacea,
Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge UK.After being closed for 5 years the newly renovated Museum of Zoology reopened this year to the public and academic researchers, making the museum one of the major Cambridge attractions with more than 75,000 visitors a year. Entry is free but the museum is closed on Mondays.The redevelopment work was part funded by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.8 million towards a total of the £4.3 million needed. The museum has some of the best collections in the world with specimens from across the entire animal kingdom, from elephants, sloths, reptiles, insects and molluscs.The great naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both left much of their work to the museum including the world famous beetle collection that Charles Darwin amassed while studying in Cambridge in the early 19th century.The collection contains more than three million items and thousands are on view to visitors including a skeleton of the extinct Dodo.Perhaps the most impressive new addition to the museum is the Whale Hall built to house the 21 metre long Fin Whale, which used to hang outside acting as a pigeon roost but now hangs over the heads of visitors upon their arrival. The Fin Whale was beached at Pevensey in east Sussex in 1865.The naturalist Sir David Attenborough described the museum as “a place where the public can come to see, study and wonder” when he reopened the museum.My photographs show detailed close ups of various skeletal remains looking at the shape and myriad forms of all animal…and some human life.All photographs are ©. Credit to read: Photograph by Brian Harris © with thanks to the Cambridge Museum of Zoology 2018.