Australian Museum

Last week was the annual Australian Museum Foundation’s Gala Dinner ✨ The evening raised over $400,000 to support projects including the redevelopment of our historic Bird Gallery 🦜🦉 The AM has one of the largest bird collections in the Southern Hemisphere with over 100,000 registered specimens. The redevelopment of the Bird Gallery will combine world-class contemporary science with immersive technology. Last night took us a step closer to this redevelopment and we’d like to thank everyone involved for their generosity. This includes the incredible performances by Opera Australia and the powerful Jannawi Dance Clan, our event sponsor Ethinvest, our MC Simon Marnie, prize sponsors and the Gala Dinner Committee. If you’d like to support this important project, there’s still time to donate here: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/Yml0Lmx5/4ooGdbZ

Species Of The Week - Macleay's Swallowtail (Graphium macleayanum) 🦋 Looking for something to do this weekend? Head to a high spot like a hilltop, and you might just see a male Macleay’s Swallowtail butterfly fiercely guarding his turf. These butterflies defend hilltops from rival males by flying at them to chase them off. Why? Because females are more likely to pass by these prime spots and he wants to be first in line. Macleay’s Swallowtail is a beautiful species, easily recognised by the tails on its hind wings and the green colour on the undersides of its wings. They are called Swallowtails because their hind wings have an extension that looks a little like a tail. This butterfly lives in urban areas, forests, woodlands and heath across eastern Australia. Learn more about this beautiful – and territorial – butterfly on the AM site: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/Yml0Lmx5/4hpGSb1 📸: Steven McIntosh

Ahoy, explorers! 🛳️ Australian Museum scientists have set sail aboard the CSIRO’s research vessel, Investigator, for the 2025 Coral Sea Frontier voyage. 🐠 Over the next five weeks, a crew of experts from across Australia – including our very own Dr Claire Rowe, Alison Miller and Younis Menkara, will explore the mysterious depths of the Coral Sea. They’ll be surveying deep-sea habitats, searching for species new to science and building a genetic reference library for future research. 🔬 We’ll be sharing their discoveries along the way, and you can even watch a livestream of scientists' activities on board over on the CSIRO’s website. 🪸 Find out more here: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/Yml0Lmx5/495tBCg #RVInvestigator CSIRO, Australian Marine Parks, Parks Australia, Ocean Census, Bush Blitz

Yes, that’s a VW Beetle that’s been taken over by LEGO® minifigures… Welcome to Beetlesville! 🚙 It’s just one of the incredible installations in our latest exhibition, RELICS: A New World Rises. Created by LEGO® Masters champions Alex Towler and Jackson Harvey, this imaginative exhibition transports you to a dystopian future where humans have vanished and a new civilisation built entirely from LEGO® bricks has taken over. Look closer and you’ll discover new details hiding in every corner. 🔍 RELICS: A New World Rises is open now at the AM until January 2026. Find out more: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/Yml0Lmx5/3W6wPOj

McGrath’s Flat is one of Australia’s most remarkable fossil sites, dating back 11-16 million years 🤯 AM scientists have discovered history-changing fossils at this site since it was discovered in 2017, including a 15-million-year-old fish and rare spider fossils! Now, new research led by the AM’s very own Dr Tara Djokic, has revealed how McGrath’s Flat was formed – a crucial step towards finding similar terrestrial fossil sites. The formation process began when rainwater washed iron out of basalt, an iron-rich volcanic rock, under warm and humid conditions. Acidic groundwater carried the dissolved iron underground until it reached a river valley, where it precipitated as ultra-fine iron-oxyhydroxide sediment. Still with us? Well, this sediment coated dead organisms on the lake floor, replicating their soft tissue down to a cellular level in iron! Knowing how this incredible fossil site formed opens up opportunities for finding similar sites around the world. You can read more about this ground-breaking (literally!) research here: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/Yml0Lmx5/48mpZvr

Today is #WorldMigratoryBirdDay 🪶 From tiny warblers to mighty albatrosses, migratory birds make some of the most extraordinary journeys in the natural world. Migratory birds can fly hundreds, even thousands of kilometres every year to find specific habitats for breeding, feeding and raising their young. Australia provides a critical habitat for millions of these migratory birds each year. In fact the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) is a route that up to 50 million birds take each year. It stretches from the Arctic Circle in Russia and Alaska, down through East and Southeast Asia, all the way to Australia and New Zealand. You can see some of Australia’s migratory birds up close in our Birds of Australia gallery 🦜 Find out more: https://www.downtownmelody.com/_x/bG5rZC5pbg/gQrKdwqX 📸: Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (Calidris acuminata), EagleEye Photos/Shutterstock