GIRAFFE START & FINISH POINT
You’ll meet your THATMuse Rep at the Giraffes in the main Hintze Hall. They will have a white canvas THATMuse tote and prior to your hunt their name and contact details will be emailed to you.TOOLS
Freshly charged batteries in your phones/cameras (per team) & comfy shoes.Your THATMuse Mission
Photo your team in front of as many pieces of Treasure as possible within the given amount of time (90 mins to 2 hrs.) With each treasure photo you’ll earn 20 game points (about 500 game points), however, with careful reading you could pick more than 1000 bonus THATMuse points. There are several ways to do this. Our bonus questions fall into three key categories: – Scrutiny (looking more carefully at the piece or surrounding rooms) – Silliness (willing to trot like a Tang horse for bonus points?) – Knowledge (All of these questions can be answered within another piece of treasure text, within the hunt) There are also a variety of more artistic challenges & Letter Scrambles spelling out your prize treasure with THATMuse Letters embedded in the text, worth 100 bonus THATMuse points! We’ve intentionally provided more treasure text & fun than you could read about within the given time in the hope that you’ll want to return or extend your visit (& to ensure strategy!)RULES
- Teams must stay together, must not run, jump or shout & of course NO NO NO TOUCHING anything…
- No external help… If seen speaking to a tourist-in-the-know or staffer you’re automatically eliminated; Likewise, no googling Marsupials, no GPS-ing where fossilized skin is, no phoning your geologist Aunt for help!
- Please be sure you have one (1) Master Copy with all the answers and only use one (1) camera/phone (to facilitate score tallying). In respect to Museum policy please mute your phones & no flash photography
- Must meet back at end point (Queen’s Gate, near Darwin Centre) at the precise time agreed. Each minute late merits 5 negative points — that’s 5 pts debited! — per minute (!!) Sometimes there are strategical reasons to be late, but attention: if you’re more than 10 mins late you’re ousted, eliminated, no point in coming back… Ouch!
MEETING POINT
We’ll meet on the corner of Cromwell Road & Exhibition Road and together will grapple with the security line entrance to the museum. Your THATMuse host will have a white canvas THATMuse tote. The name and contact details of your greeter will be sent to you via email prior to your hunt.
TOOLS
Freshly charged batteries in your phones/cameras (per team) & comfy shoes.
Your THATMuse Mission
Photo your team in front of as many pieces of Treasure as possible within the given amount of time (90 minutes to 2 hours)!
RULES
- Teams must stay together, must not run, jump or shout & of course NO NO NO TOUCHING anything…
- No external help… If seen speaking to a tourist-in-the-know or staffer you’re automatically eliminated; Likewise, no googling Marsupials, no GPS-ing where fossilized skin is, no phoning your geologist Aunt for help!
- Please be sure you have one (1) Master Copy with all the answers and only use one (1) camera/phone (to facilitate score tallying). In respect to Museum policy please mute your phones & no flash photography
- Must meet back at end point (same as Starting point) at the precise time agreed. Each minute late merits 5 negative points — that’s 5 pts debited! — per minute (!!) Sometimes there are strategical reasons to be late, but attention: if you’re more than 10 mins late you’re ousted, eliminated, no point in coming back… Ouch!
Please note, you can answer bonus questions without having found the relevant treasure, as it proves you’ve read the treasure text (& will hopefully want to return to find it after your hunt or another day; our very goal is to extend your visit and plant the seed to want to return!).
Discussing team break ups (often a 4-person family will break into two teams, one parent and one child per team) before your hunt can drum up excitement and anticipation. For a leg up on some treasure, see our THATNat category on the blog. Morsels like Human or Ape? Or Rock or Bone or Bird or Dinosaur? May just have answers to bonus questions embedded in your text!
For a sneak peek, check out this video of THATNat at the Natural History Museum:
Originally published March 13, 2018
On your THATNat at the Natural History Museum, you’ll come across lots of objects that look like skeletons. Mighty T-Rex skulls, a full Iguanodon, and winged pteranodons. But are the skeletons the same as the skulls of the mammoths and mastodons in the museum’s collection?
It’s a tricky question – one that we will answer on the hunt, of course!
Not all fossils are bones. Any trace of a long-dead creature can be a fossil. Footprints are fossils. Bones are fossils. Egg shells are fossils. Even droppings are fossils – and we can learn a lot from them! But don’t expect to find some dino do-do with any organic matter in it. That stuff is long gone.
Dinosaur remains are millions of years old, and none actually have any cell tissue in them anymore. They aren’t, well, bones. They are simply mineral replications of the bones that they once were. They have the shape and form of bone, but they are essentially rocks. There is a particular process that leads to these bones becoming the fossils you see today.
This process is called petrification. If you can remember that you’ll have some bonus points in your pocket for the THATMuse Dinosaurs and Extinct Beasts treasure hunt!
Just in time for Easter, we’ll be celebrating these creatures by bringing them back to life, even if just in our imaginations!
Meet Archaeopteryx, the most valuable fossil in the Natural History Museum!
Pronounced Ark-ee-op-ter-ix, this is believed to be the earliest bird ever discovered. This fossil was found in Germany in 1861, just two years after Darwin had published On the Origin of Species. This helped prove the value of his ideas. Never before had such a clear link between the animals of today and extinct creatures been discovered. It has teeth and claws like many dinosaurs yet is covered in feathers and seemed adapted to flight. Some people found its discovery so incomprehensible they thought it must be an angel!
This fossil is so well preserved it has been designated the ‘type specimen’ for the species. This means it is the best version we have in the world and all other possible Archaeopteryx finds are compared to this one. It seems the creature fell onto a muddy riverbank and was quickly covered up with another level of thick clay like mud, preserving it intact and flat.
Bird Brained?
Recent studies have also managed to 3D map the inside of its skull. Bird brains are squeezed so tightly inside their skulls that it leaves an imprint of the shape of the brain on the inside of the bone over time. By reconstructing Archaeopteryx’s brain they could see it had a big enough brain to actually fly, not just glide or flap about. It had excellent eyes and co-ordination just like modern birds.
Recent fossil discoveries in China have also shown many more dinosaurs with feathers. Not for flight but for display and for warmth. It could be that many more dinosaurs we know were covered in feathers, and looked more like giant chickens than the scary creatures we picture today! In February 2020 the Royal Mint released a series of 50p coins with british dinosaurs on them. Drawn by real scientist paleoartists, one depicts the Megalosaurus with a coat of feathers!
Originally published March 22, 2018
The Beatles had a famous song (at least one) where they sang, “Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, and she’s gone.” They were not talking about the Lucy you’ll meet on your THATNat hunt at the Natural History Museum in London, (but she was named after this song!) but imagine this tiny human living many, many years ago. She probably had a few happy moments, with sun in her eyes. Or at least we like to think so. Lucy was not a human; however, she was not an ape either. So, what was she?
Discovered in Ethiopia, Lucy belongs to a group of pre-human creatures called Australopithecus. There is a lot of speculation about her, but scientists are pretty sure that she is a female – because of her pelvic bone – and that she walked upright like a human. This was a big deal back in the 1970s.
Today we know more about our early ancestors, but of course it’s hard to know a whole lot about Lucy, who lived around 3.2 million years ago. We learn a lot from her, especially from teeth – of which Lucy has precious few left. You’ll find out more during the THATNat hunt, Dinosaurs and Extinct Beasts.
Keep this blog in mind if you want to have a few bonus points in your pocket when you arrive!
