Videos

Katrien Van de Vijver is a physical anthropologist: by studying skeletons and bones from the Middle Ages, she tries to reconstruct the story of the past. See what she can learn from this

Too often, companies take too little account of the environmental impact of these inventions when developing new products. Gwenny Thomassen wants to change this: she developed a model to calculate both the cost price and the impact on the environment for products based on micro-algae.

Alexandre Chevalier studies plants from the past. He is convinced that this knowledge can help us to grow food in a more sustainable way.

Nowadays, 98 million tons of chicken are consumed every year, making it the second most consumed meat in the world, after pork. BUt what about the past? Well, Quentin Goffette tries to find out which place birds occupied in the daily life (or menu) of our ancestors. 

"The study of a simple fishbone, provides us with a lot of insights on economic, ecologic and social level." Needless to say Wim Wouters is a fan of fish bones. He investigates fish remains from numerous archeological sites in order to reconstruct the history of fishing. 

Gontran Sonet explains why it is important for the Museum of Natural Sciences to have large collections of specimens. They are paramount to gain better understanding of our fascinating planet.

Were Neandertals able to breakdance? We bet you never thought of that question before, but that you're dying to know the answer by now. Well, Tara Chapman virtually (re)constructs skeletons of Neandertals and fuses them to movement of modern human to find out how they could have moved about.

Cesspits, you undoubtedly prefer to leave them closed. But that's not the case with 'plant archeologist' Lien Speleers. For her, cesspools offer treasures of information that help her to reconstruct the history of Brussels.