This is a great little taster of the treasures of the University Museum of Natural History, while that great wonder house is undergoing roof repairs. In a corridor-shaped room in the basement of the Museum of the History of Science, a sort of edited highlights, reflecting the overlap between the interests of the two museums, has been put together, with a bit of help from other University departments.

Here you can (and I did) stroke a 140 million year old giant ammonite, and watch a delightful silent short film on fungus (I had no idea slow-motion micro-photography was so advanced in 1927. It's like the Private Life of Plants in black and white with coy subtitles).

My favourite display was a selection of tiny glass sea anemones created by the famous 19th century glass-makers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. They are exquisite, delicate, and hung about with echoes of Cthulu. There are more of them in the Natural History Museum in London

The exhibition is free, and having spent a pleasant twenty minutes in it, you are then at liberty to visit the rest of the extraordinary things in the Museum of History of Science, which will certainly take you the rest of the afternoon.