To celebrate Tongan Language Week we take a look back at Project 83: Small Things Matter in 2017. This co-collecting project was developed by the Year 13 Tongan language class of Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate with the guidance of their teacher Mrs Maata Fusitua.Read more
Botany Researcher Heidi Meudt is on a mission to find and make new research collections of all native New Zealand forget-me-nots. It can be a challenge to find some of them, particularly if we don’t know a lot about them or where they are to be found. Read more
The struggles and joys of colonial exploration in Fiordland through a pair of stereoscopes. Both are from the Burton Brothers studio, one from the Alexander Turnbull Library and one from Te Papa. Te Papa’s Curator Historical Photography Lissa Mitchell investigates.Read more
Field work is a key aspect of biodiversity research to locate and collect new specimens to study. Botany Researcher Heidi Meudt took two South Island field trips in Dec 2018 and Jan 2019 with two university students in tow. Combining research and training is often a great way to get scientific research done – but was it successful this time?Read more
The theme for Cook Islands Language Week 2020 is Kia pūāvai tō tātou reo Māori Kūki ‘Āirani i Aotearoa, That the Cook Islands Māori language may blossom throughout New Zealand. Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Humanities Grace Hutton looks at some of the history of the names and languages of the different islands that make up the Cook Islands archipelago. Read more
The 13,000th image loaded on New Zealand Birds Online was of an unusually dramatic looking royal spoonbill. Bird expert Colin Miskelly explains how this image ended up on the website.Read more
Curator of Invertebrates Rodrigo Salvador tells about the discovery of a small but important collection of land snails that remained unnoticed in our collections since the 1930s. Read more
Our exhibition Bug Lab was coming to the end of its run at Chicago’s Field Museum when its deinstall was interrupted by Covid-19. So what happened?Read more
Ngā mihi o te Tau Hou! Today’s New Moon marks the start of the lunar new year. So now is a good time to sync your life to the Maramataka – the Māori lunar calendar. Read on to learn about the Maramataka and what each day of the month is good for, and then download a dial to keep track of the days.Read more
Rose Namoori-Sinclair is from Tabiteuea Island in Kiribati. She is currently working as UN Coordination Specialist – Kiribati. Her extensive research background, as part of a PhD research with the Pacific Studies Programme within Va‘aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University of Wellington, has focused on the health and wellbeing issues of Pacific women. We asked Rose some questions about the significance of te taetae ni Kiribati (Kiribati language) in Aotearoa New Zealand.Read more
What if we all had to work from home for an extended period? Many of the Natural History staff could research and write papers from home, but what about the people whose jobs normally involved handling specimens every day?Read more
Yesterday we announced the repatriation of two significant Hawaiian waiwai (treasures) to Hawai‘i. Here we republish an updated version of a blog written by Sean Mallon in 2016, documenting the journey of the ʻahu ʻula (feathered cloak) and mahiole (feathered helmet).Read more
A new DNA study by our researchers Rodrigo Salvador and Lara Shepherd revealed an unexpected land snail family across the Pacific.Read more
A recent discovery has highlighted, yet again, just how poorly we know what lives around our coasts – some within sight of our major cities – especially among rocky reefs. Te Papa’s fish expert Andrew Stewart introduces us to the polkadot triplefin.Read more
The Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage visited Te Papa’s natural history collection today to make an announcement that will be widely celebrated by the museum sector, as well as by anyone who values and appreciates New Zealand’s natural and cultural heritage as Curator Vertebrates Colin Miskelly explains.Read more
