Museum of Life What happens behind the scenes at the Museum? Why is it important to preserve the 70 million specimens in the collections? And how relevant is the research of Museum scientists to today’s challenges, like biodiversity loss and the spread of tropical disease? The BBC documentary, Museum of Life, will answer these questions, and many more. About the series Museum of Life gives viewers an inside look at the Natural History Museum and some of the 300 or more scientists who work here. Cameras follow them on collecting expeditions around the world, as they hunt for dinosaur fossils and study the biodiversity of remote areas. But there are also plenty of discoveries to be made at the Museum itself, including hidden store rooms full of specimens, and high tech science facilities, such as the DNA labs. Find out about the huge variety of plants and animals that scientists study here, and why they are important for conservation efforts today. About the presenters As a young man, Jimmy Doherty (Jimmy’s Farm, Jimmy Doherty in Darwin’s Garden, Jimmy’s Global Harvest) worked as a volunteer at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Now he returns to join the Museum scientists and find out how much has changed. 

A Museum in a Modern World
Jimmy Doherty gets to grips with Darwin's finches and Dippy the Diplodocus. Find out more about the specimens, scientists and research

[edit]Digging up the Past


Jimmy Doherty and the team find out about the discovery of a new dinosaur, the latest thinking on the personality of a T Rex, and what scientists are learning from a human skull over a hundred thousand years old. Was T.rex a scavenger or a predator? Are new dinosaur species still being discovered? And what can we learn from a human skull that is over 100,000 years old? Find out more with Jimmy Doherty
[edit]All Creatures Great and Small


They explore projects from the construction of a life-sized whale to a life-saving trip to Uganda. The true image of a dodo is revealed, and a nine-foot sturgeon turns up with the strangest tale of any object in the museum.

Discovery
Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to discover the lengths people go to to add new and rarely studied species to the collection. A colossal squid turns up at the museum, a team of scientists push through unexplored jungle in Panama and a pioneering project finds a new species at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Sweden.

The Power of Insects
Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to enter the extraordinary world of insects. They explore the great butterfly collection, meet the most stung man in the museum and discover how the museum is using insects to help at murder scenes.

A Collection for the Future
Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see how science taking place today will impact on all of us in the future. Beetles inspire new technologies, the latest scanner allows scientists to take a trip inside a shark, and ancient specimens are called into the battle to help prevent extinction