London - The Natural History Museum

Tuesday, 10th September 2013
Today we visited the Natural History Museum.  Like the British Museum, the Natural History Museum is very large and you would need a number of visits to really make the most of your time.
We were a little disappointed to arrive and see a sign saying the dinosaurs were on holiday (in fact, being checked and cleaned, until 20th September) Moral - always check the website / facebook page / twitter feed for latest updates! We are fortunate in that we will still have time to return to the museum before we fly home in early October.

 Emily greets Charles Darwin...

 There were a number of meteorites on display, incuding this one...

 Mars rock...

 Now, look carefully at the small glass vial near this meteorite.   There are tiny, tiny grains from the meteorite.  (in these two photos, the grains look like a small whitish blur at the end of the vial nearest the metoerite) Some believe that these grains could be the oldest thing you will ever see, possibly having formed early in the life of our solar system , around 4 and a half billion years ago.

 Grrrrrr!

 The spectacular models and skeletons of many giant sea and land creatures...

 The skeleton of a dodo bird... actually , this one skeleton was composed of the remaining bones of a number of individual dodo birds.

 The fossilised remains of the oldest known bird, the archaeopteryx...