Long-lost relatives: Joining the dots in snail superfamilies
A new DNA study by our researchers Rodrigo Salvador and Lara Shepherd revealed an unexpected land snail family across the Pacific.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
This past summer we engaged the services of citizen scientists nationwide to deliver samples of mosquitoes | waeroa, in our first nationwide mosquito census.Read more
Te Papa bird curator Colin Miskelly describes a recent (pre-COVID lockdown!) attempt to solve a mystery that he has pursued in several remote parts of Fiordland over the past four years.Read more
What price are you willing to pay for food? For most of us, that’s a question about money. But what if the cost were actual pain, injury and death? For some seals and dolphins, this a real risk when hunting. David Hocking, Silke Cleuren and William Parker (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) and Felix Marx (Te Papa) took a close look at a New Zealand (or long-nosed) fur seal that stranded at Cape Conran in southeastern Australia, and discovered it had numerous severe facial injuries. Read more
Eve Armstrong’s practice draws on the local landscape – just as Colin McCahon’s did. Here, the Wellington artist discusses her residency at the McCahon House and how it inspired a work now in the national collection.Read more
Endangered giant snails that suck up earthworms like spaghetti are living in a small colony in Khandallah. Curator Invertebrates Rodrigo Salvador tells us more.Read more
In August last year a small green pigeon flew across the Tasman Sea – and into the history books. It became the first vagrant bird species to be intercepted at the New Zealand border and put down as a potential biosecurity risk. Te Papa bird expert Colin Miskelly tells the unfortunate story of New Zealand’s first rose-crowned fruit-dove.Read more
Did you know there’s an endemic species of mosquito that exclusively occurs in New Zealand’s thermal pools? We don’t know much about this species, so in October and March, bug expert Julia Kasper made it her mission to find it – a mission that included a harness and a gas monitor, ʻin case of toxic gas eruptions’.Read more
Victoria University summer scholar Laura Wilson has spent two months sorting through a box of bones and dirt. The aim? To identify and catalogue the huge array of species represented in Martinborough’s Cave of Bones.Read more
A single specimen of toromiro – a close relative of our own kōwhai and extinct in the wild – has been discovered in our botany collection, where it’s been kept safe for 150 years.Read more
‘Adkin’s photographs provide an honest, in-depth insight into rural life in New Zealand during the first half of the 20th century.’ Danielle Campbell, a Museum and Heritage Studies student at Victoria University, discusses her three favourite Leslie Adkin photographs that she came across during her summer internship at Te Papa.Read more
A new species of liverwort has just been identified in Wellington and named after local amateur botanist Rodney Lewington (1935–2018). Botanist Lara Shepherd tells us more about liverworts and Rodney’s contribution to New Zealand botany.Read more
In 2017, a jacket worn by the fictional gang Toa Aoteoroa in the 1994 film ‘Once Were Warriors’ entered the national collection. History curator Stephanie Gibson explains why.Read more
Would you have the patience to spend 10 years trying to find something practically invisible? Botanist Carlos Lehnebach recently discovered his ‘holy grail’ – a collection of tiny ghost orchids in the Wellington region. Read more
© Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 2023