From Notochord to Land - Museum guide

Student - Ziyi Tang

Supervisor - Gillian Sales

This project is a visitor handbook for the Museum of Life Sciences at King's College London (Guy's Campus), designed for life science undergraduates. Using the vertebral column as a unifying theme, the handbook guides visitors through specimens in Cupboard 64 and Cupboard 46, tracing vertebrate evolution from early chordates supported only by a notochord, through jawless fishes such as hagfish and lampreys, cartilaginous fishes including sharks, ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes such as lungfish, to terrestrial amphibians including salamanders, frogs, and caecilians. 

The handbook combines handwritten text, hand-drawn diagrams, photographs of museum specimens, and excerpts from primary literature. Specimens are organised chronologically rather than taxonomically, encouraging visitors to understand each organism as part of a broader evolutionary narrative. Key transitions are illustrated through specific museum specimens: hagfish and lamprey preparations demonstrate early vertebral development, lungfish highlight the shift from aquatic to terrestrial body plans, and the diversity of amphibian forms shows how vertebrates adapted to life on land. 

A central challenge was avoiding the implication that evolution follows a linear progression from simple to complex. To address this, the handbook emphasises that earlier body plans, such as those of jawless fishes, persist successfully today. This project demonstrates how museum collections can be reframed through narrative design to support undergraduate engagement with evolutionary biology.