Museums are wonderful places to learn and appreciate. They are also vital repositories of specimens of value to science, be they type specimens (the individuals used to describe and therefore determine a species) or specimens that provide a snapshot in time of a population. It might be a newly recorded wasp, an 18th Century mongoose, or a fossil ichthyosaur. Natural history galleries provide a window into nature that few of us are otherwise able to see or experience, either because it is exotic, hard to observe, or extinct.

I think of museums as 'emporia of the weird and wonderful', and here I aim to feature images of specimens from museum natural history galleries that have an interesting story to tell...