Sometimes someone comes in and they've dropped a specimen and it's in pieces, and you see the look on their faces, and so you never know what's going to come in, really. One problem though is a constant battle. Head of Conservation Chris Collins needs to save thousands of specimens from being blown apart by an affliction known as pyrite decay. A yellow, and yellowish green colour powders are where the pyrite has oxidised and deteriorated. This specimen is defined by the ribs and already we're losing some of the rib structure in it, so this has to be treated as soon as possible. Chris is using a pioneering technique to stop these fossils from being turned into dust. So in this fume cupboard we got an ammonia gas environment, and we're gonna put this specimen to the ammonia gas. This is a specimen I did earlier on, and you can see the deterioration has now been stopped in this, so now we have to take this specimen and put it straight away into oxygen-free environment.


有时候人们进来这里，他们的标本掉在地上，四分五裂。你该看看他们的表情，你永远猜不到下一个病人是什么样。有一个问题是小组的夙敌，维护组组长克里斯·科林斯，需要避免上千化石中的黄铁矿腐蚀作用，避免化石四分五裂，这些黄色和黄绿色的粉末，是被黄铁氧化腐蚀的痕迹。这个是个脉状标本，现在已经有一部分脉状结构被腐蚀。这个标本要尽快护理，克里斯自有一套对付腐蚀防止化石崩解的办法。这个烟橱里充满了氨气，我们将用氨气熏吹标本。这是我之前处理的标本，你可以看到腐蚀已经停止了，我们现在立刻要把这个标本存放在无氧环境中。