If your school or Early Childhood Centre contributes a photo of a spider (or fern) to our citizen science projects, we’ll include the photo in Te Papa’s DeCLASSIFIED! exhibition*. More on the exhibition DeCLASSIFIED! Nature’s secrets exposed at Te Papa. * provided the contributed photo has a Creative Commons licence.Read more
New electronic Flora of New Zealand (eFloraNZ) treatments have just been published for six fern families in New Zealand. The new treatments include the hairy tree ferns, Dicksonia, and the fork ferns, Tmesipteris. Each eFloraNZ treatment is a definitive, peer-reviewed account of a group of plants. eFloraNZ treatment for the Dicksoniaceae (theRead more
Introducing a significant part of Te Papa’s macro-algae (seaweed) collection – The complete Algae Nova-Zelandicae Exciccatae by Victor W Lindauer. Algae Nova-Zelandicae Exsiccatae – 14 Fascicles – Victor W Lindauer. Victor Willhelm Lindauer (1888-1964) was a school teacher who became fascinated with seaweeds after he met a team of North American phycologists (seaweed scientists) who visited the Bay of IslandsRead more
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science…” – Edwin Powell Hubble. The natural world is full of amazing opportunities for exploration and creativity, and therefore an excellent platform on which to build and grow the scientific thinking, knowledge and confidence ofRead more
As the Science Collection Manager responsible for managing the botany collection, part of my job is to increase public access to the collection. One way to achieve this is through online narratives. This blog series will highlight some recent botany narratives. In this blog we introduce narrative topics of some recent, veryRead more
Te Papa Botany researchers Heidi Meudt, Jessie Prebble and Carlos Lehnebach have recently published a new paper in the scientific journal Plant Systematics and Evolution on New Zealand forget-me-nots (genus Myosotis). There are approximately 100 species of forget-me-not species in the genus Myosotis, about half of which are only foundRead more
The DeCLASSIFIED! citizen science projects have been running for nearly three months. These projects are an opportunity to learn spiders and ferns with Te Papa’s experts, and to help us with our research. The Ferns with Te Papa project has gathered up more than 920 observations from 59 contributors. 365Read more
New bird species are added to the New Zealand list at a rate of at least five per decade. In most cases these are lone individuals that have blown off course (mainly across the Tasman Sea), or migratory species that have apparently ‘got in with the wrong crowd’, and endedRead more
This Sunday marks the fourth anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook the city of Christchurch, claiming the lives of 185 people and changing those of thousands of residents in ways that it is often hard to conceive unless experienced. In Te Papa’s commemorative display (20 February to 22 March 2015),Read more
Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently led a team that visited Takapourewa / Stephens Island Nature Reserve, to select and gather up 100 fairy prion chicks to move to Mana Island near Wellington. This is the sixth (and last) in a series of blogs about the project andRead more
Last week Te Papa Botany curator Leon Perrie and I attended the Uawa BioBlitz in Tolaga Bay. Organized by the Allan Wilson Centre and Groundtruth, the BioBlitz was an intense 24 hours of species discovery. Scientists from a variety of organisations were joined by members of the local community, includingRead more
Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently led a team that visited Takapourewa / Stephens Island Nature Reserve, to select and gather up 100 fairy prion chicks to move to Mana Island near Wellington. This is the fifth in a series of blogs about the project and the wildlifeRead more
Te Papa vertebrate curator Dr Colin Miskelly recently led a team that visited Takapourewa / Stephens Island Nature Reserve, to select and gather up 100 fairy prion chicks to move to Mana Island near Wellington. This is the fourth in a series of blogs about the project and the wildlifeRead more
On 16 October 2014 Te Papa hosted tyrannosaur expert Dr Stephen Brusatte who revealed the newest members of the tyrannosaur family to an enthusiastic audience. We heard about his global travels to dig up fossils and the latest research on tyrannosaur diversity and evolution. Only this year Steve helped describeRead more
Fairy prions are small burrow-nesting seabirds that breed in large colonies on many islands around New Zealand. The largest colony (of about 1.8 million pairs) is on Takapourewa / Stephens Island in the western approaches to Cook Strait. As part of a project to restore the ecology of Mana IslandRead more
