The National Museum in Bloemfontein is hosting the Free State Young Artists Awards in celebration of Youth Month again in 2022. This art competition will be open to all learners in the Free State under the theme “Only One Earth.”
Exhibition News: The National Museum is commemorating Youth Day with a temporary exhibition which focuses on the school boycotts in Mangaung during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Youth Day, which is annually commemorated on June 16, was declared a national public holiday day to remind South Africans of the Soweto uprisings of June 1976 and the sacrifices that were made by Soweto’s students who bravely resisted an inferior education system.
National Museum CEO, Sharon Snell, congratulated Dr Nico Avenant for this prestigious recognition as the author of the most cited paper. The paper was published in Integrative and Comparative Biology ( ICB ), one of the most highly respected and cited journals in the field of biology.
Image: A Chirqui Fire Salamander (𝐵𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑎 𝑐𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑦𝑙𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑒) encountered at night on a fern. Photo: Roger Morales.
Eighteen new species of reptiles and amphibians were described worldwide during May 2022, comprising three salamanders, four snakes, five lizards and six frogs. In addition, the Blue-bellied Kukri Snake (𝑂𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑛 𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑢𝑠) was re-discovered in India.
Image credit: An Atlantic Mudskipper rests on the sandy beach of the aqua-terrarium.
The National Museum is pleased to announce that its latest live display, Atlantic Mudskippers, has been reopened! Atlantic Mudskippers 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑚𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑠 (Atlantiese Klimvis) are aquatic fish that spend much of their life out of water, breathing through their skin or using water stored in their gills.