Lyuba

The Edinburgh Evening News made the National Museum of Scotland's latest exhibition, recently arrived from San Diego, sound unmissable, free to us members but £9 adult, £7.50 concessions, £6 children - surely it must be terrific?

It was truly a mammoth show, with full-size replicas of several species, skeleton parts, even real fossil poo. The showpiece was Lyuba, a woolly mammoth, only a month old when she slipped into a Siberian river and was covered in mud 42,000 years ago and lay undisturbed until discovered, preserved entire in the permafrost, by reindeer farmers; she has provided so much Mammoth information to research scientists.

The downside was that, even on this quiet Wednesday afternoon, the (American kid) commentaries on the information films vied with each other and the noisy hands-on demonstrations. The impression is that the exhibition is in too small a space and is very much geared to children, so adults need fingers in ears or earplugs to have any chance of concentration.

By complete contrast, the Higgs Boson exhibition, on the ground floor, is on a much smaller scale and the presentation rather more grown-up.

PS. Apparently this is my 1095th entry - I hadn't noticed but am pleased it was with an  'elephant'!