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Abstract
Fractured mountains: quartz crystals and the Cairngorms
Dr Sarah Laurenson is Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History and Head of the Modern and Contemporary History Section. She is responsible for the Scottish collections representing cultural, social, political, military and domestic history from c.1750 to the present.Laurenson, Sarah
collections, Scottish material culture, mountains, fragmented objects , research, natural environment, and mineralogy
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2023
Interview (radio, television)
Research on urban and rural red foxes
In Edinburgh, Gillian Burke and Iolo Williams head into a cemetery to see the wildlife that uses these city habitats as a haven.Cooper, David
archeological record , feeding animals, urban foxes, messaging, climate change, sustainability, and human/animal interaction
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Presentation
The skull morphology of London’s foxes: Exploring phenotypic plasticity and long-term adaptation as a consequence of dietary change
The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) shows diverse ecological, behavioural and dietary plasticity, and is now a common sight in UK towns and cities. Yet colonisation of the fox in London occurred relatively recently, following the Second World War and rise of suburban housing. With only ~70 years since urbanisation, red...Cooper, David
London , urban, skull morphology., and Vulpes vulpes
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2022
Abstract
At the edge of the waterscape: Interaction at the boundaries between drainage basins in early prehistoric Britain and Ireland
River catchments and drainage basins are being increasingly used as units of ecological and socio-political organisation. There is also ample evidence in the archaeological record that knowledge of drainage basins was important in the past. This paper will explore a wide array of archaeological evidence that the watershed boundaries of...Goldberg, Martin
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Confronting colonial histories and legacies in Egyptian and Sudanese collections at National Museums Scotland
Maitland, Margaret
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2022
Journal article
Signatures of increasing environmental stress in bumblebee wings over the past century: Insights from museum specimens
Determining when animal populations have experienced stress in the past is fundamental to understanding how risk factors drive contemporary and future species' responses to environmental change. For insects, quantifying stress and associating it with environmental factors has been challenging due to a paucity of time-series data and because detectable population-level... -
2022
Journal article
First large‐scale quantification study of DNA preservation in insects from natural history collections using genome‐wide sequencing
Insect declines are a global issue with significant ecological and economic ramifications. Yet, we have a poor understanding of the genomic impact these losses can have. Genome-wide data from historical specimens have the potential to provide baselines of population genetic measures to study population change, with natural history collections representing... -
2022
Book
The earth: a biography of life: the story of life on our planet through 47 incredible organisms
It is difficult to conceive of the vast scale of the history of life on Earth, from the very first living organisms sparking into life in hydrothermal deep-sea vents to the dizzying diversity of life today. The evolution of life is a sweeping epic of a tale, with twists and...Pancorili, Elsa
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Lecture
Climate change: a time travel adventure
Join climate campaigner and author Alice Bell in a trip through time to the decisions, inventions and accidents which created the warming world we’re living in today – and how it could have ended up quite differently. Beginning with the discovery of CO2 in Edinburgh, travel through the pioneering age...Bell, Alice ; Higgitt, Rebekah
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Lecture
Bones, teeth and gum: How museums can contribute to improving animal welfare
How museums can contribute to improving animal welfareKitchener, Andrew C
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2022
Journal article
Novel mtDNA haplotypes represented in the European captive population of the Endangered François’ langur (Trachypithecus francoisi)
Assessing the genetic diversity of captive populations of endangered species is key to the successful management of conservation-breeding programs. In this study, we sequenced a 393-bp fragment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region of 23 captive individuals of the Endangered François’ langur ( ) to assess the mtDNA diversity...Farré, Marta ; Johnstone, Cameron ; Hopper, Jane ; Kitchener, Andrew C ; Roos, Christian …
Captive populations, mtDNA , Conservation genetics , and François’ langurs
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2021
Journal article
A kingdom in decline: Holocene range contraction of the lion (Panthera leo) modelled with global environmental stratification
Aim We use ecological niche models and environmental stratification of palaeoclimate to reconstruct the changing range of the lion (Panthera leo) during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Location The modern (early 21st century) range of the lion extends from southern Africa to the western Indian Subcontinent, yet through the... -
2020
Lecture
The big picture and regional narratives
Understanding what happened across the Scottish landscape between c.4,000-2,500 BC requires us to adopt multiple scales of enquiry, from the international to the local. This lecture explores the main developments and highlights the diversity in the regional trajectories of social and economic change by focusing on two contrasting and often...Sheridan, J A
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2020
Journal article
‘Tuesday Morning’, the schoolboy and Mann early medieval burials at Holm Park near Ballantrae, Ayrshire, Scotland
The rediscovery of human remains, correspondence and other unpublished excavation archival material in the Glasgow Museums collection of Ludovic McLellan Mann prompted the reappraisal of a short archaeological investigation undertaken in April 1931 at Holm Park, near Ballantrae, Ayrshire, by a schoolboy, Eric French and his biology teacher, William Hoyland....Finlay , Nyree ; Duffy , Paul ; Dene, Wright ; Maldonado, Adrián ; Cerón-Carrasco, Ruby
Inhumation burial, Mesolithic, Dog whelk shells, and Historiography
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2020
Blog post
Collecting the present
Contemporary collecting has been a hot topic for many museums for several years now. Curators have adopted several different approaches to ensuring their institutions are responsive and capturing the important issues of the time so that present and future visitors are better able to understand and learn from the experience...Breward, Chris
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2020
Journal article
Collecting COVID-19 at National Museums Scotland
This opinion piece discusses National Museums Scotland’s first responses to collecting COVID-19. Drawing on perspectives from social history, biomedical science and military history, this short paper contextualizes COVID-related collecting within the contexts of the organization’s programme of contemporary collecting and the nation’s ongoing socio-political journey.Laurenson, Sarah ; Robertson, Calum ; Goggins, Sophie
Scotland, Contemporary collecting, social history, military history, and medical history
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2020
Journal article
Museum during a crisis
These are strange times. As I write this (16th March 2020), the number of coronavirus or rather Covid-19 infections is rapidly increasing and I am uncertain whether our Museum, the National Museum of Scotland (NMoS), will even be open to the public this time next week. This 160 year old...Walcott, Rachel
Coronavirus, National Museums Scotland, National Museum of Scotland, and Covid-19
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2018
Journal article
Cyprus as an ancient hub for house mice and humans
Aim The distribution of the western house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) around the world has been strongly influenced by the movement of humans. The close association between the house mouse and human phylogeography has been primarily studied in the peripheral distribution of the species. Here, we inferred the complex colonization...García‐Rodríguez, Oxala ; Andreou, Demetra ; Herman, Jeremy S ; Mitsainas, George P ; Searle, Jeremy B …
house mouse, phylogeography, mtDNA, human, bioproxy, and Cyprus