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The Micrarium

A beautiful back-lit cave of 2,300 microscope slides highlighting some of the smallest specimens in the collection.

The Micrarium at the Grant Museum

Why are most museum displays filled with big animals when 95% of animals are tiny? The Micrarium sheds light on our smallest animals, using some of the Museum’s 20,000 microscope slides.

These slides were used by zoology students who could check them out like library books. The bottom panels show a selection of glass lantern slides which were projected to illustrate lectures at UCL. Also on display are slides from influential zoologists such as J.P. Hill, R.B. Freeman, G.H. Fowler and D.M.S. Watson.

The slides mostly show whole animals, or slices through whole small animals but there are some tiny bits of larger animals such as a platypus tooth and some mammoth hair.

Read more about the Micrarium in our blog.

Video: The Micrarium

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