The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded a grant of £1.8 million to the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. This funding will support ambitious plans to completely redevelop the Museum of Zoology with displays showcasing the wonders of the animal kingdom, and new stores to preserve its outstanding collections for the future.

An exhibition exploring human discovery in all its forms – selected from more than five million objects at eight University of Cambridge museums – will open in London on 31 January 2014.

The University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge will be closed to the public from June 2nd 2013. Subject to planning permission, the museum will be undergoing a major redevelopment.

Thresholds – a unique residency project that matched ten of the UK’s best poets with ten of Cambridge University’s museums and collections - reaches its thrilling climax today when their commissioned works are published online for the first time.

The University Museum of Zoology contains far more than a record of the past. Ambitious redevelopment plans will enable enhanced use of its unique collections for research into global issues from climate change to conservation.

New research shows for the first time the intricate three-dimensional structure of the backbone in the earliest four-legged animals (tetrapods).

A notebook recording the fauna of Cambridgeshire observed and collected by the Reverend Leonard Jenyns between 1820 and 1849 has been published in full for the first time. A significant naturalist in his own right, Jenyns turned down the offer of a place on HMS Beagle, recommending instead a younger colleague, Charles Darwin.

Tonight Cambridge vertebrate palaeontologist Professor Jenny Clack is the subject of BBC Four’s Beautiful Minds series. The programme looks at her contribution to our understanding of early tetrapods - the first four-legged creatures to walk on earth.

All British thoroughbred racehorses, including Polymelus, are descended from three stallions – the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk.

It has been auctioned three times, housed in a cricket ground and owned by the mayor of Hastings.