A Visit to the Queensland Museum 1 (Natural History or the Natural World of Life)

A Visit to the Queensland Museum 

 Natural History or the Natural World of Life*

Brisbane, Australia

Museums preserve and exhibit important cultural, artistic, historical or scientific artifacts. While these exhibits provide informative and visual explorations, there are many benefits to visiting these institutions. Simply put, museums help to teach, inspire and connect communities.

Natural history is the study of animals, plants and their environments, along with earth and environmental sciences. It is the careful observation and inquiry into each piece of an ecosystem; it is the interconnectedness of species and habitat in both space and time. Internet

Photographs taken by Dr Abe V Rotor

Author's family takes time and leisure viewing the rich collection of the state museum 

which was founded in 1862. 

Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian.

 

First and foremost, museums and galleries provide an insight into the history of humankind. And while no museum can claim to provide a complete picture, the lessons we can learn from past events, wonders and tragedies are priceless. This is especially true in times of turmoil.

  

 

“ If it is truly active and reflective of its own time, a museum will, like any living thing, change and grow. Dynamism lies in keeping abreast with the times - our fast changing modern times, when man in the last two centuries alone, has discovered more things than what all his ancestors probably did." - Dr. Dillon Ripley, curator and director of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

 

“A museum is a place where nothing was lost, just rediscovered…”

― Nanette L. Avery

  

  

  

 

Kangaroos are marsupials from the family Macropodidae. The term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, and western grey kangaroo. Kangaroos are indigenous to Australia and New Guinea. The iconic Aussie kangaroo evolved rapidly and much later than we thought, around 3 million years ago, in response to the spread of grasslands.

   

   "Evolution is a process of gradual change that takes place over many generations, during which species of animals, plants, or insects slowly change some of their physical characteristics." (This is the key to biological diversity - AVR)

  

What are the unique characteristics of insects? Unlike other arthropods—like lobsters, spiders, or millipedes—insects have three pairs of jointed legs, segmented bodies, an exoskeleton, one pair of antennae, and (usually) one or two pairs of wings.

 

Reptiles are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have scaly bodies rather than hair or feathers; most reptile species are egg-laying, though certain “squamates” — lizards, snakes and worm-lizards — give birth to live young.

  

The diversity of life on Earth today is the result of evolution. Life began on Earth at least 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, and it has been evolving ever since. At first, all living things on Earth were simple, single-celled organisms. Much later, the first multicellular organisms evolved, and after that, Earth’s biodiversity greatly increased. Internet

    

Marsupials have long been considered the intermediate step in evolution between egg-laying and placental mammals, because they give birth to highly underdeveloped young similar to an embryonic state for placentals. Australian marsupials and placental mammals are suitable examples of adaptive radiation and convergent evolution.

How did marsupials evolve pouches? Early marsupials nested their young like birds and rodents, but evolution favored the development of a pouch to keep them in. This allowed marsupials to spread into more niches. Females could do whatever while their young rested in the pouch.

 

Early fossil records show that sponges inhabited Earth around 600 million years ago. That is a mighty long time for an animal without a complex nervous, digestive, or circulatory system! Some deep-water sponges can live to be over 200 years old.

One of the most striking features of our beaches is seashells. Their whorls, curves, and shiny iridescent insides are the remains of animals. Most shells come from soft-bodied mollusks. Snails, clams, oysters, and others need the hard protection of their shells.

 

Most scientists believe that sharks came into existence around 400 million years ago. That's 200 million years before the dinosaurs! It's thought that they descended from a small leaf-shaped fish that had no eyes, fins or bones. These fish then evolved into the 2 main groups of fish seen today.

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*The Natural History (Latin: Naturalis Historia) is a work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". 

 It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger. The work is divided into 37 books, organized into 10 volumes. 

These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, art, and precious stones. Pliny's Natural History became a model for later encyclopedias and scholarly works as a result of its breadth of subject matter, its referencing of original authors, and its index. Wikipedia/Internet

Acknowledgement: Queensland Museum, Internet   

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The author is the founder and former curator of the Farmers' Museum of the National Food Authority, St Paul University QC Museum, and presently, the Living with Nature Center of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur.