Natural History Museum - animals and us

Early Jurassic ammonite

I thought I knew how big dinosaurs were - I've seen diagrams, photos like this, and animations. However none of that compares to standing beneath one yourself, and feeling that truly great presence.

Yes you are still allowed a favourite dinosaur as an adult - and mine is the parasaurolophus (despite the fact I've been pronouncing it wrong all my life) 

Dinosaurs suffered injury and disease just like any other animal. The bone on the left is an iguanodon hip bone and shows a fracture that healed with misalignment. I can only presume this is a non-loadbearing structure, as while I can fully expect a cat to heal from a fractured pelvis, an animal of this size is a different matter altogether. Not only that, but a wild animal must constantly be active in order to feed itself, and to avoid predators. This must have been a very lucky iguanodon.
The foot is from another (very large) iguanodon and the edges of the toe joints demonstrate osteoarthritic changes. What's impressive about this is how unusual it is for wild animals to survive into such old age, normally they die from predation or disease before such age related changes occur. That would be one hella large dose of metacam!

Archaeopteryx - need I say more

Case full of hummingbirds

Skull of a Barbary Lion - check out those nasal trabeculae

Chart of known hominin species. The timescale rather boggles the mind - 3 million years in the "human" branch alone. It's no wonder evolution has been a notoriously difficult concept to grasp, as we just can't fathom the lengths of time and minute changes involved.

Neanderthal skull showing classic ridged brow

Above are models of Homo neanderthalis and early Homo sapiens. These 2 species co-existed in the same regions for possibly 30,000 years, before the extinction of neanderthals 35,000 years ago. Recent DNA evidence supports inter-breeding between the 2 species, which may have helped Homo sapiens adapt more rapidly to the colder climate that the neanderthals had been living in for thousands of years already. Much of the shared DNA is "non-coding" but some appears to be involved in our immune system, and given how little we know about non-coding DNA I wouldn't discredit it's relevance to our development either.