Museum of Life (2010)
Synopsis
Museum of Life is a 2010 BBC2 documentary, that takes a look behind the scenes at the British Museum of Natural History. It is introduced and co-presented by Jimmy Doherty, who was a volunteer at the Natural History Museum ten years previously. Other presenters are Kate Bellingham, Liz Bonnin, Mark Carwardine, and Chris Van Tulleken. The six-part program ranges over topics such as the care and maintenance of the Museum's 70 million specimens, and the relevance of research by the Museum scientists to contemporary problems such as biodiversity loss and the spread of tropical disease.
Episodes
A Museum in a Modern World
Jimmy Doherty gets to grips with Darwin's finches and Dippy the Diplodocus.
Digging up the Past
Jimmy Doherty and the team find out about the discovery of a new dinosaur, the latest thinking on the personality of a T Rex, and what scientists are learning from a human skull over a hundred thousand years old. Was T.rex a scavenger or a predator? Are new dinosaur species still being discovered? And what can we learn from a human skull that is over 100,000 years old? Find out more with Jimmy Doherty
All Creatures Great and Small
They explore projects from the construction of a life-sized whale to a life-saving trip to Uganda. The true image of a dodo is revealed, and a nine-foot sturgeon turns up with the strangest tale of any object in the museum.
Discovery
Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to discover the lengths people go to to add new and rarely studied species to the collection. A colossal squid turns up at the museum, a team of scientists push through unexplored jungle in Panama and a pioneering project finds a new species at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Sweden.
The Power of Insects
Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to enter the extraordinary world of insects. They explore the great butterfly collection, meet the most stung man in the museum and discover how the museum is using insects to help at murder scenes.
A Collection for the Future
Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see how science taking place today will impact on all of us in the future. Beetles inspire new technologies, the latest scanner allows scientists to take a trip inside a shark, and ancient specimens are called into the battle to help prevent extinction.
Cast
Details
Original Title
Museum of Life
Status
Ended
Seasons
1
Episodes
6
Production
BBC