Original subtitles

In the heart of London is an incredible world,

The Natural History Museum.

Home to 80 million sensations of nature.

From dinosaurs to whales,

giant squid to billion-year-old rocks.

It's probably the most important fossil of a dinosaur that there is anywhere in the world.

Now, our cameras have been allowed behind the scenes...

This rather large crate reminds me of something from the movie Indiana Jones.

...to meet the team...

SHOUTING: Geronimo!

...keeping it up and running...

Who's a good boy!

I think they're gorgeous.

...welcoming up to five million visitors a year...

Hello, Control. Are we ready to open the museum?

...and bringing its unrivalled treasures to life.

So, this is the oldest thing that we have in the museum, it's actually older than the solarsystem.

In this episode, putting T-Rex back together...

I don't know which bone goes with which skeleton.

...coming face-to-face with deep sea monsters...

Some of these animals you might not even realise are actually real animals.

...and getting starstruck by Sir David.

David Attenborough himself has put a sample into this very tank.

He stood on that step.

He touched this handle.

Here we go, to infinity and beyond.

This is the Natural History Museum as you've never seen it before.

The Natural History Museum is one of Britain's top attractions.

Every year millions of visitors flood in to get up close to the giant skeletons and exotic creatures

that fill this world-famous site.

But, of the thousands of extraordinary exhibits, by far the biggest draw are the dinosaurs.

From prehistoric bones to man-made models,

if something goes wrong in this gallery, it's a big problem.

And, today, it has.

The most popular dino of them all, the robot T-Rex, has developed a fault

and needs urgent attention.

We want to get the tail off and have a look at this cylinder in here that we think's squeaking.

We've not come across this before.

Technicians Glen and Alex have been called in to try to fix T- Rex's tail

which is making a worrying rattling noise.

We need to give it a little squirt.

It's not the first time T- Rex has gone wrong.

Six months ago there was a problem with his head.

T-Rex was shaking his head, violently. It was completely out of control.

The body was shaking and it was head banging.

For young kids this is terrifying.

Yeah, pretty dramatic.

He kept that up for the best part of an afternoon

before somebody told us about it.

Because this thing weighs a couple of tons, it caused a little bit of damage elsewhere.

Until Glen and Alex can get to the bottom of the rattle, T- Rex is off limits.

Let's get the tail down, which is the position we've got it in now, and we'll slip the rubberoff.

Can you slide it off?

OK?

It brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and terrifies them.

Children come round this corner and are terrified. They scream.

It's great for that.

When the T-Rex isn't working we get lots of bad press from the, erm, parents.

And lots of crying children.

Mind your head, Glen.

With T- Rex turned off whilst they figure out what's gone wrong,

they take the chance to give him a top-to-toe MOT.

The eyes are looking OK. It's mainly the eyelids that wear out rather than the eyes.

His giant jaws make him a target.

Kids that come here use the T-Rex as target practice. We find all kinds of things.

Pencils, sandwiches, crisps, M&Ms...

You name it, they try and get it in his mouth.

No flying objects this time.

All good.

Ah! That's what's wrong.

Finally, they discover the source of the rattling.

And it's not good news.

Part of the catch that holds the tail on has snapped.

It could cause another problem along the line.

Once that happens, that's when we lose control of the robot.

T- Rex will now be out of action until Glen and Alex have fixed him

and they're sure he's not a risk to the public.

But they'll need to get their skates on.

While robot T-Rex awaits urgent repairs, deep in the basement there's the real thing.

Remarkably, the museum holds the skeleton of the first T- Rex ever discovered.

But clino expert Susie Maidment has a problem.

The huge bones of this 66 million-year-old T-Rex have been muddled up with another T- Rex.

Today, Susie is setting out to solve this giant jigsaw puzzle.

At the moment, I don't know which bone goes with which skeleton.

So, that's what I'm going to try and figure out today.

It might be a bit surprising that all of these bones are jumbled up.

We have so many dinosaur specimens in the museum to look after and, up until now,

this specimen hasn't really been the focus of any attention.

So, I'm hoping to correct that today.

These T-Rex bones were dug up in Wyoming in Mid-West America over 100 years ago.

They're incredibly historically important specimens, so it's pretty amazing to be getting them out

and handling them today. Wow! They're heavy, too.

This is a metatarsal, which is a foot bone. It's the one that footballers always break.

It's pretty long. That was the height of T-Rex's foot, without its toes.

But there's something else mixed up with the bones.

KNOCKING

That's plastic T- Rex.

These specimens were mounted in the dinosaur gallery for a really, really long time and

the missing bits that we didn't have of the skeleton were filled in with plastic, like this.

Erm, so, I think, we can probably get rid of these now.

This looks like it could be quite fragile. This is a big, back rib. So, it's broken at the endhere.

It would have continued on and tapered down to nothing.

The ribs can be really, really fragile because they're so narrow

and they've been around for 66 million years

so they can just collapse under their own weight.

50, sometimes, you have to be super careful with them.

This is the lower jaw.

There we go, look at those

massive teeth.

It's these teeth and this jaw that gives the T-Rex its fearsome reputation.

Can you see these steak-like knife serrations

that would have allowed the T-Rex to cut through flesh?

The idea of being chased and eaten by a T-Rex, oh, it's terrifying!

It had a bone-crushing bite and these massive teeth would have chomped

through most of the other things that were alive at the time.

Three hours later and 66 million years after they were alive,

Susie has sorted one T-Rex from another.

This is maybe a half of a T-Rex that we have here. All of the neck and the back.

Haven't got much of the tail by the looks of things, but its bones are in pretty good nick.

I actually really enjoy having a good tidy up of the collections.

I don't like mess. I have a very clean house. I like to have a very clean collection as well.

Coming up...

...we discover the museum's gruesome underwater world...

This is the tentacle of a Colossal Squid.

...and the most daring mission the museum's ever undertaken.

No-one's ever done a project like this before.

The Natural History Museum is home to giants of nature

that are millions of years old.

But, behind the scenes, experts are busy on cutting-edge projects for the future.

Lyndall Pereira is working on one of the most ambitious missions the museum has ever been involved in.

Called the Darwin Tree of Life Project, its aim is simple but staggering,

to collect and store samples of every one of the 60,000 species of plant, animal and insect

that's alive in the British Isles today.

So, what we're trying to do with this project is get a tissue sample

from every single species in Britain.

Two hundred years ago, they had to collect the entire organism and store them in museums like this.

Now, we can learn so much from such a tiny sample.

Here, in one of the most high-tech parts of the museum, is a tank of liquid nitrogen

where the samples will be stored at minus two hundred degrees.

This tank can fit 60,000 of these tubes so there's enough space to fit

one sample for every species that you can find in Britain.

We're taking the DNA from these organisms that will stay in here safely

for the next 300 years, at least.

And we can learn so much from them.

David Attenborough himself has put a sample into this very tank.

Stood on that step.

He touched this handle.

This tank is a Noah's Ark for the 21st century

with its samples of every living thing in Britain.

It's going to take at least another ten years to fill

but it's a race against the clock.

We're losing species at a faster rate than we can even discover them so, we need to find them and

learn as much as we can about them if we have any hopes of saving them in the future.

No-one's ever done a project like this before.

It's going to be a big challenge.

We have about a thousand species in this tank so far, so we have 59,000 still to go.

Before the visitors arrive for the day, Housekeeping Supervisor Debbie Marler gets to spend a little extra

time with some of her favourite displays.

As a cleaner, you get to see a lot more of what the public don't see because you've got no distractions.

You can actually stop and look at everything in detail.

So, this is a case of humming birds and there's more than a hundred birds in here.

These birds are from South America and each is a tiny treasure.

I love this case. They just look like little diamonds sparkling.

It's amazing.

They're tiny little birds that can give off so much colour.

Their beaks are so thin they're like tiny little sewing needles.

There's no way you can get bored at looking at all this stuff.

Every time you look at it you find something different.

It's like watching a movie.

I've spent a lot more time cleaning this case than a lot of other things.

In the far corner of the museum there's an area where

only those with the strongest of stomachs will venture.

Jon Ablett is one of those in charge of this mysterious world.

This next room holds some of the most amazing, bizarre-looking creatures that you've ever seen.

Some of these animals, you might not even realise are actually real animals.

And we call this part of the museum the Tank Room.

This vast room is filled with rarely seen creatures from the deep.

All perfectly preserved.

This is the tentacle of a Colossal Squid,

what we believe is the largest species of squid.

They've never found a fully grown Colossal Squid, only juvenile ones.

But we think they reach up to about 18 metres

and this one came from the stomach of a sperm whale,

one of the few animals that is big enough to eat it.

One of the amazing things is these hooked suckers that they have

and these are used for grabbing on to their prey.

These actually turn and screw into the flesh of anything that it catches

to stop them from getting away.

Today, Jon's preparing some cuttlefish for a new exhibition

about fantastic beasts.

He needs to work fast while they're still fresh.

One of the amazing things about alcohol preserved collections is

the fact you've got the whole animal.

You could cut this open and see what it had eaten just before it died.

You could investigate it for parasites, there are some many more things that you can do

which is why they really are truly amazing specimens.

These came from Cornwall, they came up this morning, so we're going to start with this one.

It's, er, probably the most complete and in the nicest condition.

I'm going to arrange it into the pose we want it to stay in, because the fixing preservation will,

kind of, harden out the tissues and, er, make it less flexible.

Handling the special preservatives is dangerous work.

This chemical, formalin, just stops the rotting process.

There's a few frozen patches so it's a little tricky to get the syringe in but we just need to get enough

of the chemical in to fix it from the inside, as well as the outside.

It stops it from degrading and, hopefully, the specimen will last hundreds of years.

Next, the cuttlefish will be immersed in a tank of formalin so that it's preserved inside and out

and in ten days, it'll be ready to go on display.

The most prized specimen in this undersea world is the biggest and strangest of all.

This is Archie, giant squid. I have quite a big personal attachment to this specimen.

She's about 8.62 metres in length and it came to the museum in 2004 when it was caught by some fishermen

off the coast of the Falkland Islands.

They pulled up their nets, found this amazing creature.

Archie is a girl, er, it's quite easy to sex a giant squid

because they are one of the few squids

to have external penises, in the case of a male,

er, and for a male giant squid

the penis would be about a metre in length so...

no metre-length penis, definitely a girl.

This complete giant squid, almost the length of a double decker bus,

is one of the few anywhere in the world.

It took 20 people to prepare this specimen and it's now one of the museum's biggest attractions.

It's incredibly rare to get a complete giant squid.

You can see it has an eye on either side

and it has the second largest eye of any living creature.

You can see in this specimen, there are some very, very large suckers.

And this is what they use for grabbing on to prey,

pulling it back so they can hold it and eat it.

This is the closest that most visitors will ever get to a deep sea giant.

People relate them to these monsters of the deep, you know, the kind of stories of these grabbing sailors,

pulling boats down to their depth

and, just to have a glimpse of this huge animal, that,

until relatively recently, people didn't know was actually a real animal, is really truly amazing.

In the heart of the English countryside, Hever Castle in Kent was once home to Anne Boleyn,

the second wife of Henry VIII.

This morning it's part of the most ambitious project the museum's ever been involved in.

To collect every one of the 60,000 species alive in the British Isles today.

A dozen museum experts have arrived at dawn ready to collect and record rare species living in the grounds,

starting with the castle's creepy-crawlies.

So, now, we're looking for old trees. That one looks good.

Beetle expert Max Barclay is on the hunt for ancient bugs

and he's using some old-fashioned methods to get them.

I'm beating this oak tree because oak trees support probably more

species of insect than any other species of British tree.

There's about 15 or 20 different species of insect on this beating tray so, erm, where did that go?

A little flea beetle there.

Some of these trees are, at least, a couple of hundred years old

and there's probably been a kitchen garden here since the castle was built, so there will have been

a succession of trees and the beetles associated with the trees would have passed down

from generation to generation. 50, they will be able to trace their lineage back to the Tudors.

People ask me whether I have much time for people who don't like insects, but

I don't really know any people who don't like insects.

But, while Max is beating trees, some of the team are still struggling to get started.

You've got to pull it out. It should just come.

É

First challenge of the day.

CHEERS

How are we going to manage the trestle tables?

That's the next challenge.

Project leader Lyndall Pereira will make sure all the specimens collected today

are identified and recorded on site.

That's if they can get the kit working.

Do we have power? Yes, we do!

Here we go.

Station's ready.

These samples must be flash frozen so they can be rushed back to the museum for DNA analysis

and permanent storage.

But that means getting their field equipment to sub-zero temperatures.

This is dry ice. This is where the specimens will come, this is like the flash freezing point in here.

And, it's, yeah, minus 80, so it's super cold.

Today, the team are searching for the smallest creatures to be found in the castle grounds

because they're the most important.

The big animals are wonderful and charismatic but, in terms of what they actually do for us ashumans,

I don't think it can compare to what insects do.

For the team, any changes to these small creatures could mean big trouble ahead.

Insects are like the canary in the coalmine, they warn us of environmental change.

And when insect populations start to change, we should take notice because

sooner or later, those changes will go on and affect other animals, like ourselves.

The team are hoping to catch as many new specimens as they can.

For the day to be a success, they need to find specimens

that haven't yet been stored in the museum's giant tanks.

The gardens have been untouched, so to speak, for about a hundred years or so,

some of the parts anyway, so I think that there's a good chance that we'll find

a lot of things you wouldn't find anywhere else.

The Natural History Museum holds more than 80 million specimens

that have been collected over hundreds of years,

ancl Blanca Huertas is one of the experts responsible for some of the most beautiful.

She oversees the biggest, and most spectacular, collection of butterflies and moths

anywhere in the world.

She's been at the museum for 15 years and butterflies have become a bit of an obsession.

Once you get into butterflies, you can get a little bit mad,

and you don't stop thinking of them, you don't stop collecting them...

Blanca has five million butterflies to look after and, every year,

passionate, private butterfly collectors send her thousands more.

Every year I receive about 20,000 new butterflies to come

into this collection, into this building.

So, I need to rearrange everything again, just to put one or two specimens inside,

so it's a never-ending job, never-ending.

I can tell you, I do this every day of my life

for the last 15 years.

The butterflies come in all shapes, sizes and packaging.

We got hundreds and hundreds of boxes like this and they contain specimens from 1911

and they send it on cigarette boxes, on biscuit boxes.

People used to keep butterflies

in cuts of newspapers, I get very distracted reading all of the stories.

This is the story of a lady who is recommending soap with the smell of roses.

So there's, er, curiosities, lots of curiosities in this collection.

This is the Queen Alexandra butterfly,

the biggest butterflies in the world.

This is called the Blue Morpho, it's flying in Colombia, where I come from.

It's just such a big collection, you never finish anything.

And when you do it's about five or six years of your life taken,

only on one minor, minor corner of the collection, so, so they take your life, definitely.

Coming up...

...getting T-Rex back on his feet...

Who's a good boy!

...and the museum's smelly secret.

When it first comes out of the animal it smells like crap, literally.

The Natural History Museum is in one of the richest neighbourhoods in Britain,

but buried beneath its newest wing is a foul-smelling secret.

A hundred years ago, huge dead whales were brought to the Museum to rot

in specially dug, shallow graves called whale pits.

Once they'd rotted, their skeletons could be added to the collection.

Whale expert Richard Sabin knows all about them.

These were huge holes in the ground full of sand.

You put your specimen into the sand, cover it over, leave it for a year or so.

The bugs and the beetles come along and they do their business

and they munch away at all the soft tissues and, after about a year,

you actually end up with something that looks exactly like

this wonderful photograph.

It does generate an awful lot of smell and,

with the wind in the right direction on a nice, warm summer's day,

you get complaints from the neighbours, unfortunately,

living in South Kensington, working in South Kensington.

Probably not the best place to be burying partially decomposed whales.

There were quite a few complaints and I think that's probably one of the reasons why,

along with the Second World War, the practice stopped.

And there are a few more surprising secrets from these gentle giants.

This hundred year old waxy lump might not look like much, but it's from a sperm whale's intestines

and is extremely rare.

You'll smell it before you see it.

Known as ambergris, it's been used to make perfumes for centuries.

And a piece this size would have been worth thousands of pounds.

This used to be more valuable than gold. Can you smell it yet?

It's a really unusual material. It's basically made up of

the parts of the animals that the sperm whale eats, things like squid.

When it first comes out of the animal it smells like crap, literally.

Once it emerges from the sperm whale it floats to the surface of the ocean and then the waves

start to wash away that horrible kind of faecal smell, the poo smell that it has.

These lumps can float on the surface of the ocean for months or years before they wash up on beaches

and are found by people.

It has quite a pleasant, sort of, musky, slightly sweet odour.

I love the smell.

I really do.

Ambergris was also loved by royalty.

There was a recipe that was a favourite of King Charles the Second

and it was, like this scrambled eggs with shavings of ambergris.

Er, very unusual. Highly acquired taste, I should imagine.

Richard has spent the last 29 years in charge of the museum's huge, and popular, whale collection.

I think one of the things that really makes whales fascinating for people is the fact that they are so

unseen, unknown, mysterious.

For centuries, millennia even, these huge creatures have been such a surpfise

when they appear on our beaches. They suddenly appear from their world into our world.

In the grounds of the museum is a new building known as the Cocoon.

In this eight-storey tower, hundreds of experts are busy with cutting-edge work.

Today, abseiling cleaners Paul and Killian are polishing its 90-foot-high, concrete surface.

So, the Cocoon is where you store all the creepy-crawlies.

I've never been in there myself though, erm, cos I'm not the biggest fan of creepy-crawlies.

Erm, and that's eight floors of creepy-crawlies so...

I'm a bit too scared to go in there, to be honest. Especially wood lice, they freak me out, too many legs.

This is quite a complicated thing to clean, actually.

It looks really nice. It's an interesting building but I feel like the architect

forgets the guys cleaning it sometimes.

It would be really convenient if they painted it a different colour, a bit darker.

We're just trying to get all the dust off, make it look nice and white and pretty for the public.

So, it's kind of, like, er, extreme housework, really.

Geronimo!

Right, it's looking good.

OK, nice and white again.

One of the museum's most popular attractions is its vast collection of stuffed animals.

From ostriches to elephants,

giraffes to gorillas,

some of these animals are over 150 years old

and the collection is one of the biggest in the world.

He looks alive. Look at his eyes.

But less than half of the collection is on display.

At a top secret location, far from the museum, thousands more fill a giant warehouse.

Some of them have just been on tour abroad,

and today, they're coming home.

Hello! Hi! It's Nicola from the Natural History Museum.

Oh, perfect, ten minutes. OK.

Getting them home safely means a nail-biting morning for Head of Conservation Lorraine Cornish.

So, we've got two lorries coming down here with nine crates, over 70 specimens.

Nicola Farrington is in charge of today's delicate operations.

We have crates that contain really huge specimens like deer and antelope.

We've also got Arabian oryx and orang-utans.

All hands on deck today to make sure everything goes smoothly.

I think, in there, is a Giant Tortoise.

Don't quote me on that.

We're always watchful because we just want them to arrive safely.

The museum's stuffed animal storeroom lies behind locked doors.

Lorraine is one of a handful of people with access to this hidden world.

You put the lights on, everything is still but, suddenly, all the eyes are there, just looking.

It's a complete treasure trove for anyone who gets the opportunity to come and see behind thescenes.

People who are fortunate enough to come into this space, and there aren't many,

are always completely amazed.

It's a world of wonder.

They've all got their charm.

Some are more charming than others, possibly.

This one always amuses me, you've got the fangs coming out here.

Looks cute, but also menacing all at the same time.

This probably stood in a Victorian parlour or something.

You can see the wire so where the claws are gone.

He looks to me like he would've been holding a tray or something.

So, just hiding around the corner, literally, because they're too big to go on any shelving,

we've got some giraffes just hanging about and I like to come and see them.

It makes me feel quite small when I stand next to this one, but it is rather lovely.

I like to come and stand amongst them, it's quite calming.

To Lorraine's eagle eye this world-renowned collection is more like a stuffed animals' A & E.

I mean everything I look at I want to treat.

Bit of a split bottom situation.

This one, oh, just looking over and saying, "Pick me! Pick me!"

There was a bit of literaljaw dropping on this one and so they've just, er, improvised

and they've done a bit of a crepe bandage just to, kind of, hold everything together.

But there's one type of creature that's never welcome inside the secret store.

Pests are our enemy number one when it comes to protecting the collections.

You don't really see them but if they get in

and they start eating their way through a collection

there's nothing left, so we have to be vigilant, we have to be on it and it's just a war.

These stuffed animals, returning today, can't just be unpacked, they need to be quarantined

in case they've brought back any unwelcome visitors.

What we do is we put them into freezers, take them all the way down to around minus 30

so we can make sure that anything that has come back, little pests, little beasts

on the taxidermy, will not be alive when we take them into the storeroom.

With 70 specimens returning today, it's a squash and a squeeze to get them into the giant freezer.

A bit like a jigsaw, isn't it?

We've got an orang-utan coming off just now.

There's a troublesome tuna that I'm quite fond of, that's one I want to look at.

It's now 72 hours of deep freeze before Lorraine and Nicola can see

whether their animals have returned home safe.

Can't wait to get into the crates. We've got to wait for a few days for that.

Inside the dino gallery, robot T-Rex has been out of action

needing urgent repairs to his tail

which has been making a worrying rattling noise.

That's the new part back in there. This is all nice and tight now that rattle's gone.

Nice, straight back. Knees bent.

Today, technicians Glen and Alex hope that he'll finally be ready to meet his public again.

You get the controller.

Mind your back.

Who's a good boy?

We'll have the audience back in, in the next half an hour.

A lot of smiling faces, that's always a good thing.

With his tail firmly back in place, Rexie is back up and running.

This is one of the better things to repair. There's immediate, erm, thanks.

ROARING

At Hever Castle, expert collectors from the museum are busily raking the grounds

for rare British wildlife.

It's part of a unique nationwide project to make a record

of every species alive in the British Isles today.

All the grass here is just absolutely full of insects and spiders. I've got tons in here.

Insect expert Gavin Broad has just found a rare wasp.

You've got a parasitoid wasp. This is one of the wasps that eats insects alive.

It's a kind of gruesome biology but it's fascinating from my perspective.

It's cleaning its back legs now.

Got to keep yourself looking spick and span. It's got to go and attract a female, hasn'tit?

So, er, got to look good.

While fellow expert Ben Price has a very different type of insect in his sights.

I'm catching dragonflies. This is a blue-tailed damselfly male.

They're really fast, you can't catch them from in front because they'll just dodge out of the way.

You've got to sneak up behind them.

This is, er, also a damselfly. You can see it's an incredible green colour.

The hat, the shorts, sturdy boots and a net is pretty much unchanged from the way insect collectors

would have collected a hundred years ago.

Ah! Although shorts were a bad choice today with all these nettles.

I'm not quite tall enough. I can't reach most of the branches on these trees.

Bug expert Max Barclay is beating rare beetles out of their hiding places.

That's a rather nice insect. This is the forest bug. It's one of the stink bugs, er,

these produce a very unpleasant smell when you handle them

so I'm not going to poke it too much.

So, that's Chryptocephalus pusillus, this little beetle here.

I bet we haven't got one of those on the project.

The team will only know if their wildlife treasure hunt has been a success

when it comes to the final tally in just a few hours.

There's more than 20,000 species of insect in the UK and,

er, it's always exciting for me when I see

something that I've never seen before.

Coming up...

...we find out if the stuffed animals are still in one piece...

There's not often that you can say you've looked into an orang-utan's armpits.

...and an incredible new find on the Great British Bug Hunt.

Oh wow! Yeah.

At the Natural History Museum's secret off-site store,

a group of precious stuffed animals is returning from a world tour.

Today the museum's Head of Conservation, Lorraine Cornish,

and Touring Co-ordinator, Nicola Farrington, are about to find out

if they're still in pristine condition.

The next specimen is especially rare.

Looks good.

It looks happy to be home, I think.

This is a Bornean orang-utan, critically endangered, numbers are still in decline at the moment so,

may yet become extinct. We certainly hope not.

It's nice to see it back, safe and sound.

This is how he would have been in the exhibition, so looking a bit more natural really,

hanging out on a branch or climbing on a branch so we've got the branch included here.

They have to get up close to make sure there's been no nibbling by moths.

Can you see under here as well, Lorraine? In that armpit.

There's not often that you can say you've looked into an orang-utan's armpits,

but you know, few people can say that, can't they?

No sign of any insects, which is exactly what we want to see.

Nothing to see here, which is such good news.

His eyes are quite dramatic. They are, aren't they?

Lorraine and Nicola need to inspect the rest of the fragile cargo to make sure they haven't been

damaged while on the road.

We can take the front off, that would be great.

It's obviously survived well, hasn't it? Yeah, it's done pretty good. Yeah.

So, this is an Arabian oryx, which is a sort of medium sized antelope.

Yep. You all right?

It looks to be without damage, which is always a relief.

It has survived the journey.

No dead beetles or moths after putting them through the freezer so that's really good news.

Marvellous. I think we can tick this one off the list.

Excellent. Yes.

Yeah.

Only now can these specimens be put back on the shelves until their next world tour.

I think that's a really good manoeuvre there, Nicola. I don't think I'd be able to do that.

Yes, very happy.

He looks fine and it's nice to see him back in the store for now,

with all of his primate friends, so, he'll be very safe here.

He's just enigmatic, isn't he? Maybe he's thinking about something. Who knows?

It's the end of the day on the Great British Bug Hunt

and the moment of reckoning for the museum's team of collectors.

So, that's a little parasitoid wasp. That's my, my great find of the day.

New to the species list as well. Yeah, yeah. Not had that before.

It looks like they've got a bumper crop.

Yeah, it's a... ..dragonfly that I caught.

F

I think that was a pretty good haul.

É

Q

They make a hissing sound as the tube is at room temperature and it goes into a snap freeze

to almost minus 200 degrees.

50, Laura, we've got quite a lot of bugs here, and beetles.

Hopefully, some of those are going to be useful for you.

We've managed to find quite an exciting selection

of insects and I'm absolutely sure this will be the first time that anyone has

sequenced the DNA from these species.

Four or five racks of these today. So, that's about, that's almost five hundred samples

and that equates to about 100 to 150 species, 30 of which are brand new to our project,

that we haven't collected before and that's amazing.

We can count this as a really, really successful day.

Today's haul from this historic castle will be flash frozen so it can take its place in

the Natural History Museum for hundreds of years.

Next time...

...an exciting new dinosaur discovery...

We get to unwrap them and discover what's inside. It's like Christmas.

...a seven billion-year-old rock from outer space...

It's actually older than the Solar System.

...and Max uncovers an incredible ancient secret.

These beetles were alive when the Pharaohs were building the pyramids.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media

Good evening, the headlines from 5 News.

I'm Dani Sinha.

Homeowners are bracing themselves for more flooding next week,

after Storm Christoph wreaked havoc across north west England and Wales.

Hundreds of residents were told to leave their homes

in Greater Manchester and Wales because of the adverse weather.

River levels are rising, and flood warnings remain in place.

Lockdown restrictions may drag into the summer,

according to Number Ten.

Scientists warned it would not be safe for pubs to open until May.

It comes as the UK recorded another 1,290 deaths

within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

And this year's Glastonbury Festival has been cancelled

clue to the pandemic for a second year running.

The organisers said their efforts to move heaven and earth had failed.

The event was due to take place in June.

That's all, see you soon.