#StevesLibrary: Snake Day – A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Serpentine Lives
Snakes are among the most misunderstood animals on the planet. They have inspired mythology, folklore, religious symbolism and popular culture, yet they continue to provoke disproportionate fear and hostility. For many people, an encounter with a snake is something to…
#MuseumMonday: A visit to the Muzeum Farmacji Collegium Medicum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
In the heart of Kraków, on the busy and historic Floriańska Street, is a museum that offers an unusually intimate journey into the history of medicine, science and everyday life. The Muzeum Farmacji Collegium Medicum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, or Museum of…
#MuseumMonday: The Museum of the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University
When I visited the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University this summer, I also had to check out the museum that it houses. It would have been ruse not to! The Museum of the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University…
#StevesLibrary: The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Reign of the Mammals is an ambitious attempt to tell the evolutionary story of one of the most successful groups of animals on Earth, while ultimately exploring our own origins. Following his earlier book, The…
#SciFri: Visiting the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University
The Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University is an unusual institution to review because it is simultaneously a historic garden, scientific collection, educational resource, conservation facility, cultural landscape and public attraction. Founded in 1783, it is the oldest botanical garden…
#SteveReviews: The Dinosaurs on Netflix
There is something almost audacious about calling a four-part television series simply The Dinosaurs. It is an enormous subject to compress into roughly three hours of television: approximately 165 million years of evolutionary history, encompassing the origins and diversification of…
#MuseumMonday: Muzeum Przyrodnicze Instytutu Systematyki i Ewolucji Zwierząt PAN in Kraków
There are natural history museums that overwhelm visitors through monumental architecture, vast galleries and spectacular collections (I’m thinking about a certain museum in South Kensington here), and there are museums whose importance lies somewhere rather different: in the scientific history…
#SciFri: Sealife Adventure – A Review of Essex’s Unusual Zooquarium
On Southend-on-Sea’s Eastern Esplanade, just a short distance from the famous pier and the bright lights of Adventure Island, is an attraction that occupies an unusual position between aquarium, zoo, educational centre and family entertainment venue. Sealife Adventure describes itself…
#SteveReviews: Surviving Earth
There is a familiar problem with television programmes about the history of life: dinosaurs tend to steal the show. The fossil record, however, is considerably stranger and more interesting than a succession of tyrannosaurs, velociraptors and sauropods. Surviving Earth, an…
#SciFri: An exhibition review of Jurassic Oceans – Monsters of the Deep
There is something inherently appealing about an exhibition devoted to the prehistoric oceans. Dinosaurs may dominate popular perceptions of the Mesozoic, but the seas of the Jurassic and Cretaceous worlds contained an equally extraordinary cast of evolutionary experiments: dolphin-shaped ichthyosaurs,…
