Chris Van Hayden Tours

21/02/2025

First Ammonite find

13/02/2025

https://www.guidelondon.org.uk/blog/around-london/the-linnean-society-at-burlington-house-in-london/

The Linnean Society is one of a number of learned societies that have made Burlington House their home. It was founded in 1788 by the amateur botanist Sir James Edward Smith who, spurred on by the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, purchased the natural history collection of the Swedi...

12/01/2025

One of the 38 complete Iguanodons bernissartensis discovered in Belgium in 1878. Mantell, Owen in England speculated on the Iguanodon appearance having only partial remains found in England from 1822 onwards, using comparative anatomy - hence early illustrations are censurably inaccurate. Famously Mantell Mantell argued its spiky thumb to be a facial horn, think rhinoceros. Scroll right to see Waterhouse Hawkins’s Iguanodon at the Crystal Palace, designed with the help of Owen.

This plaster cast Iguanodon can be found at the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which holds the famous William Buckland Megalosaurus, the first named dinosaur 🦕 🦖

11/01/2025

One of the most interesting coats of arms in the UK, is that of Maidstone, a town south east of London. It shown on the left hand side a dinosaur holding the shield.

In 1834 the most complete Iguanodon fossil remains were found in the town and acquired by Gideon Mantell, who first described the species - this was the second dinosaur named after the Megalosaurus a decade earlier.

With this find, Mantell was the first palaeontologist to posit, Iguanodon was perhaps bipedal and not a quadruped. The idea took decades to catch on, once other bipedal dinosaur species were discovered.

Join me at the Natural History Museum to see these and other pioneering fossils of dinosaurs.

19/12/2024

https://www.chrisvanhaydentours.uk/blog/its-all-in-a-name-the-linnaean-society

It’s all in a name - The Linnaean Society…

09/12/2024

Poppy on the loose!

04/11/2024

https://www.chrisvanhaydentours.uk/

Major website overhaul. More streamlined with all info on the home page and translated version in Spanish and Italian, which can be accessed by clicking on the Menu.

I have also listed my top tours and fields of expertise.

Rock on!

CVHT

CHRIS VAN HAYDEN TOURSHi there,I’m a London Blue Badge Tour Guide - the highest tourist guiding qualification in the UK - with a great passion for London, its history, art, architecture, museums, galleries, entertainment, shopping and everything that makes our capital such a special place.Have a l...

26/08/2024

Allosaurus - Strange lizard

Way before the much larger T-Rex roamed the Earth, the Allosaurus was the top predator of the Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. It was smaller, largest found is about 10 metres in length, nonetheless it was a stunning theropod, with arguably more proportionate arms than the T-Rex armed with 3 deadly claws.
This specimen found in Wyoming early 2000s is displayed in Marqueyssac estate in the Bordeaux region 🦖

25/08/2024

Boxwood galore in Marqueyssac, France

11/08/2024

Sharknado on the Regent’s Canal

06/07/2024

A triceratops skull, the one thing I’d like to buy at Harrods if only I could squeeze it through my front door.

The famous department store is just a stone’s throw from the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, so it apt this is on sale in Harrods’s basement.

Get in touch for a tour of London’s ‘Cathedral to Nature’, to learn about its history, the history of palaeontology, geology and its fantastic collection of dinosaurs 🦕, stuffed mammals, human ancestors, rocks and more.

24/05/2024

John Lennon’s Phantom V Rolls Royce in front of the former Apple HQs on Savile Row

29/03/2024

Natural History Museum, a cathedral to nature…

28/03/2024

Plaster cast of Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis which confirmed our early ancestors, which looked still like apes, started walking upright. This strategy had many benefits such as freeing hands to do other tasks like carry food and tools. This in turn stimulated our increased brain size and corresponding intelligence…in some of us at least.

Lucy lived about 3.7 million years ago and was named by the team who found her in Ethiopia, after Lucy in the sky with diamonds, the opener track on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, by the Beatles.
You can find this replica of Lucy at London’s Cathedral to Nature - the Natural History Museum

26/03/2024

Best photograph I took yesterday from Sushi Samba at the top of the Heron Tower. In the bottom left Tower Bridge, the Gherkin centre stage and in the distance on the right the Shard.

The sushi was deli 😋

08/02/2024

A small little known church in Milan’s town centre, Santa Maria Presso San Satiro features one on the earliest Trompe-l’œils from the 15th century.

The apse shows a deep recesses perspective of a barrel vault supported by classical style pilasters. This space is only 3.11 feet or 95 cm deep, but the illusion tricks the ey to think the space recess much deeper.

Designed by the Renaissance pioneering architect Donato Bramante.

16/01/2024

Echidna, also known as spiny anteater. One of 4 species which along with the platypus are the only mammals that lay eggs. These are common in Australasia.

So why do they lay eggs? Well, about 19 million years ago they revolved from platypuses, which in turn where egg laying mammals that took to the water, once they were outcompeted by marsupials. Effectively the Monotremes, as they are known features traits that most other mammals lost in their evolution, such as a cloaca - an single rear opening used to defecate, urinate and mate - like crocodiles!