Emperor penguin, Aptenodytes forsteri

Intrepid expeditions to Antarctica for scientific and geographical research revealed extraordinary species such as the emperor penguins.

Penguins are so familiar to us now it's hard to imagine people seeing them for the first time. This is one of the first emperor penguins ever collected, from sometime between 1839 and 1843. The specimen was collected in Antarctic waters by a 22-year-old naturalist, Joseph Dalton Hooker. Hooker was part of a team travelling on the British naval ships Erebus and Terror, in search of the South Magnetic Pole. When he returned to the UK, everything he collected was examined and named by other naturalists and experts, and the large bird was officially called Aptenodytes forsteri.

Scientists on the fateful British Terra Nova Antarctic Expedition (1910–1913) collected penguin eggs and their embryos. The team's zoologist Edward Wilson was on his second journey to the South Pole, led by Scott. He came back to collect penguin eggs, desperate to study the embryos to test a theory that birds were evolved from reptiles. Accompanied by his close friends and colleagues Henry Robertson Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Gerrard, he left the main camp in search of the colony. They faced torturous conditions of freezing winds and huge ice ridges, their sledges pulling heavy on their backs. But 19 days later they collected five precious eggs, two of which broke. Back at camp, Wilson and Bowers were selected to join Scott on his final push to the pole. They never returned. It was left to Cherry-Gerrard, heavy with grief after losing his team mates, to deliver the embryos and eggshells to the Museum in person.

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