Identifying obscure and bizarre objects is all in a day’s work for staff in the Queensland Museum Discovery Centre! Today Dr Jonathan Cramb, Information Officer joins us to share his mystery object of the month. Can you hear the ocean with this? The Mystery These objects were given to the museum as part of an old teaching collection. They are about 10.5 centimetres long and … Continue reading Mystery Object: Can you hear the ocean with this?
I have yet to meet anyone that isn’t fascinated by venomous creatures and their potential to… well, kill you. Australia is full of them and some are not always what you would expect! Working at the museum means I have access to a whole host of natural history objects. Recently I had to do a photoshoot featuring some of the venomous animals I work on. … Continue reading Trolley of Death
Imagine you’re a scientist, diving into the freezing cold waters of the Antarctic. You’re not there to observe the larger organisms so closely associated with that part of the world – whales, seals and impossibly cute penguins – but the smallest: the marine invertebrates. What is it about these lesser-known creatures, the ones we rarely think of, that would entice you into those icy waters? … Continue reading Museum Revealed Podcast [Ep 22]: Climate change impacts on marine invertebrates with Dr Sue-Ann Watson
By David Parkhill Assistant Collection Manager, Queensland Museum South Bank The Queensland Museum holds twenty shabti, or shabti related objects in its Archaeology collection. Here is a closer look at one of them. The afterlife Ancient Egyptians, along with many other cultures, held a strong belief in the afterlife. Also in keeping with other civilisations, they would include grave goods such as perfume bottles or … Continue reading Working for the Man in the Afterlife
by Queensland Museum Library Staff The William McLennan Personal Papers Collection, part of the State Collection held in the Queensland Museum Library, will soon be as free as a bird. Queensland Museum Network (QMN) has recently received a major donation to enable the conservation and digitisation of the William McLennan Personal Papers collection of ornithological field journals, letters and photographs which detail significant historic field … Continue reading Donation to digitise the William McLennan Personal Papers
Ancient Rome has had a lasting impact on the world, particularly on Western cultures. You may be surprised to hear that many of the objects, concepts, technologies and machines from Ancient Rome are still part of our contemporary lives. Ancient Rome: The Empire that Shaped the World exhibition includes working reconstructions of ancient machines and other technical innovations using materials of the era – wood, … Continue reading Ancient science in contemporary times
By Dr Paul Oliver, Senior Curator Vertebrates. In a quiet corner of the Queensland Museum, behind the public galleries and displays, six small dumpy green parrots sit in a special drawer. These are among the last known specimens of Coxen’s Fig Parrots. They were collected well over half a century ago, before populations of this species precipitously declined—possibly to extinction. Years later, they’re now helping … Continue reading New stories from old specimens: understanding the history of one of Australia’s rarest parrots
Queensland Museum Network Ichthyologist Jeff Johnson and colleagues recently described three new species of fish. The three new species were trawled from Australian waters at depths as deep as 120 metres. Pseudanthias paralourgus is described from just five specimens collected off south-eastern Queensland and was trawled from depths of 110-120 metres. Tosana dampieriensis is described from three specimens from off Western Australia and Tosana longipinnis … Continue reading New species of fish found in Australian waters
By Patrick Couper, Senior Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians, Queensland Museum There were only two species of gastric brooding frogs and both were narrowly restricted to mountain ranges near the Queensland coast. The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog, Rheobatrachus silus, lived in the Conondale and Blackall Ranges north of Brisbane and its northern counterpart, R. vitellinus (commonly called the Northern Gastric Brooding Frog) was found in fast … Continue reading Rheobatrachus vitellinus, a species that vanished the year after its discovery
Geraldine Mate – Principal Curator of History, Industry & Technology and Alessandra Schultz – Volunteer, Cultures & Histories Program When you snap that amazing photo of a mountain or waterfall, do you ever think about the early photographers of Queensland? This year marks 150 years since the London International Exhibition where Richard Daintree’s images of early colonial Queensland were first displayed. From May to August 1871, a collection of … Continue reading 150 years of Daintree
Because some of them bite, sting or pass on life-threatening diseases, lurk in our kitchens at night, or eat our garden plants, not to mention occasionally decimate our food crops, insects tend to get a bad rap. But that’s not really fair. If they didn’t exist, nor would we. In fact, because of our existence, theirs is under threat. And perhaps this AMAZINGLY diverse class … Continue reading Museum Revealed Podcast [Ep 21]: Ants: bioindicators of climate change with Dr Chris Burwell
In honor of the 230th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Pandora, Dr Maddy McAllister, Senior Curator of Maritime Archaeology has selected three objects rarely seen from the extensive collection held at Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. _______________________________________________ HMS Pandora was the British Royal Navy warship dispatched to the South Pacific in pursuit of the infamous Bounty mutineers. On its return journey, approximately 140km east of Cape York, … Continue reading Small things sometimes mean a whole lot
We may be biased, but at Queensland Museum Network we reckon we’ve got one of the best science centre’s in Australia! SparkLab, at Queensland Museum, has awesome interactive exhibits, live science experiments and investigations and a maker space – but perhaps best of all, learning officers who have science and education expertise and make it their mission to get you playing, questioning and testing your … Continue reading Museum Revealed Podcast [Ep 20]: Building SparkLab: How have Science Centre’s changed with Rebekah Collins
by Joanne Wilkinson, Senior Fossil Preparator and Conservator The Mackenzie family, on their remote South West Queensland property between 2004 and 2006, had discovered a total of six dinosaur sites. With so many sites to explore, the family invited palaeontologists Dr Scott Hocknull and Alex Cook, and fossil preparator Joanne Wilkinson to assist with the investigation of one of the most interesting sites. It was … Continue reading Preparation of ‘Cooper’s’ bones at the Plevna Downs preparation lab
Queensland Museum scientists have described five new species of golden trapdoor spiders from south-eastern Queensland. From being found in the inner-city to the bayside suburb of Burbank and further afield to the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast hinterlands, the new spiders were a challenge to uncover. Meet the new species! NAME: Euoplos regalis FOUND: Mount Glorious and Mount Nebo areas. Euoplos regalis is one of the biggest … Continue reading Scientists strike gold with five new species of golden trapdoor spiders
Many of us think nothing of picking up a few things for dinner on the way home, or purchasing a trolley load of groceries at the supermarket on the weekend. Shopping in supermarkets is a part of everyday life in Australia, but it is a fairly recent phenomenon. Large suburban shopping centres only sprang up in the years since car ownership became commonplace in the 1950s. Continue reading In every suburban street
Hop aboard the Museum Revealed Podcast Express to the Queensland Museum Network’s Ipswich campus: The Workshops Rail Museum. Somewhere amongst the network’s biggest and heaviest collection items you’ll find Curator, Rob Shiels. Like the museum itself, Rob isn’t just about trains, so come along for the ride… you never know where he might take us! Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Let’s meet our guest: Rob Shiels … Continue reading Museum Revealed Podcast [Ep 19]: The Workshops Rail Museum with Rob Shiels
By Dr Christine Lambkin, Queensland Museum Entomologist These images show an aggregation of nymphal True Bugs. Not all insects are ‘bugs’ but these are. If you turned one over and looked at the head you might see the proboscis – a long, thin, straight feeding tube lying down between the legs – that makes these ‘True Bugs’ belonging to the Order Hemiptera. Unusually, we can … Continue reading These true bugs are a treasure
Identifying obscure and bizarre objects is all in a day’s work for staff in the Queensland Museum Discovery Centre! Today Colleen Foelz joins us to share her mystery object of the month for August. What am I? At 30 centimetres in length, am I: An over-sized model of a small land animal? A life-size giant of the ocean? Or a replica of a prehistoric sea … Continue reading Mystery Object: A life-size giant of the ocean?
In mid-2019, buying a chess set for my granddaughter’s birthday proved to be more difficult than I imagined. I was looking for something special – not too expensive – a set that might last her until she could afford a better one of her own one day. The range of sets I found in toy and department stores was small and uninspiring. Sales staff reported … Continue reading Queensland Gambit
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