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Museum of Life

A Collection for the Future (6 of 6) (#106)

Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see how science taking place today will impact on all of us in the future. Beetles inspire new technologies, the latest scanner allows scientists to take a trip inside a shark, and ancient specimens are called into the battle to help prevent extinction. [59 minutes] Closed Captioning

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This episode has not aired in the past few months on Iowa Public Television.

Series Description: For the first time viewers will get a real glimpse into life behind-the-scenes for hundreds of scientists in this much-loved institution. The series shows some of the important work the Museum's leading scientists do as well as tell the stories of some of the amazing specimens. Museum of Life is hosted by Jimmy Doherty, who as a young man, volunteered at the Museum. Jimmy returns to join the Museum scientists, working with some of the millions of specimens looked after there, and travelling to projects around the world. Jimmy Doherty is joined by engineer Kate Bellingham, doctor of tropical medicine Chris Van Tulleken, environmental scientist Liz Bonnin and zoologist Mark Carwardine. They travel with scientists who are tackling a diverse range of global problems such as threats to the Earth's biodiversity, protecting delicate ecosystems, environmental pollution and human diseases. The Museum's world-class collections include 70 million specimens. In Museum of Life, viewers will follow the fascinating stories of some of these specimens such as the iconic Diplodocus, the rare and fragile Archaeopteryx and the extinct dodo.

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  • Museum for a Modern World (1 of 6) (#101)

    Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to join the people who are uncovering secrets, solving mysteries and making discoveries among the 70 million items in the historic collections. In the first of this series, Jimmy gets to grips with Darwin's finches, Dippy the Diplodocus and a radical project aiming to hold back extinction. [59 minutes]

  • Digging Up the Past (2 of 6) (#102)

    Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to join the people who are uncovering secrets, solving mysteries and making discoveries among the 70 million items in the historic collections. Jimmy Doherty and the team find out about the discovery of a new dinosaur, the latest thinking on the personality of a T Rex, and what scientists are learning from a human skull over a hundred thousand years old. [59 minutes]

  • All Creatures Great and Small (3 of 6) (#103)

    Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see work taking place on animals. They explore projects from the construction of a life-sized whale to a life-saving trip to Uganda. The true image of a dodo is revealed, and a nine-foot sturgeon turns up with the strangest tale of any object in the museum. [59 minutes]

  • Discovery (4 of 6) (#104)

    Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to discover the lengths people go to to add new and rarely studied species to the collection. A colossal squid turns up at the museum, a team of scientists push through unexplored jungle in Panama and a pioneering project finds a new species at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Sweden. [59 minutes]

  • The Power of Insects (5 of 6) (#105)

    Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to enter the extraordinary world of insects. They explore the great butterfly collection, meet the most stung man in the museum and discover how the museum is using insects to help at murder scenes. [58 minutes]

  • A Collection for the Future (6 of 6) (#106)

    Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see how science taking place today will impact on all of us in the future. Beetles inspire new technologies, the latest scanner allows scientists to take a trip inside a shark, and ancient specimens are called into the battle to help prevent extinction. [59 minutes]

    Watch Video From This Episode Online

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