This week on Futureproof we go to see the things that the public don’t get to see at the Natural History Museum.

In the capable hands of Nigel Monaghan, Keeper of the Museum, we take a tour of the other buildings belonging to the Natural History museum which is home to many of the collections that are not on display to the public.

There are a further 2 million scientific specimens that they look after. These include bones of ice age animals from Irish caves which include the remains of woolly mammoth and brown bear! The collection also houses some 20,000 sea shells, 25,000 spiders in tiny jars of alcohol, bones and skin tissue samples of whales stranded around the Irish coastline, skulls and skeletons used for reference by archaeologists trying to identify what they dig up, a collection of 3,000 bird wings collected 100 years ago by lighthouse keepers around the Irish coastline and used for the first major study of bird migration in the world. 

There are also some very scary skulls as you’ll see from the photo above. It’s the skull of a macaque monkey and as you’ll see from the photo it has braces. It was previously used by a dentist who was practising his dental skills.

Take a fascinating tour with us this Saturday at 10am.