The Sedgwick museum - Cambridge pt1.

The first day of our circumnavigation of the UK led us through Cambridge, and I was keen to stop by and visit the famous university’s natural history museum.

Cambridge is a great walking city, with cobbled streets and lanes packed with spired buildings and wide, green courts lined with ancient trees. These streets were very busy when we arrived and the reason for this became evident when we noticed large numbers of people walking around in gowns - it turns out we were there during graduation. This proved to be good timing for us as we had the run of the museums.

Dr John Woodward was a late 17^th and early 18^th century scientist who, upon his death, bequeathed his natural history collection and a substantial amount of cash and land to the University of Cambridge. This led to the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology (still a valid chair today) and the Woodwardian museum at Cambridge. Today this museum is part of the larger Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.

This makes Sedgwick one of the world’s oldest museums, with its origins dating back to 1728.

Home to around 2 million geological specimens and fossils, the museum is ‘a major teaching and research resource in the Department of Earth Sciences.’

The front door is at the end of a rather grand double staircase, with bison statues on one side and bears on the other. Inside the display is like stepping back in time- in a good way I assure you. Sure there are modern displays of ichthyosaurs, dinosaurs and ancient mammals, not to mention a number of modern dinosaur replicas- such as a copy of the skull from Stan, the T. rex - but these all seem almost secondary to the gems in the old style display cabinets- and when I say old style, I’m not kidding. 

The display is split into two wings, with the Mesozoic fossils on one side and older Palaeozoic fossils on the other. Standing between the two is a life size bronze statue of Adam Sedgwick, one of the fathers of modern geology and the man who first recognised and proposed the Cambrian and Devonian Periods. Highlighting this, the statue holds a geological hammer in one hand, while in the other outstretched hand he holds that universal symbol for fossils everywhere, a trilobite.

Charles Darwin was Sedgwick’s most famous student, and there is a large display in the museum of the fossils the naturalist brought home from the HMS Beagle voyage. These tiny treasures were given to the museum after Darwin’s death. 

This and many other displays are amongst the great enjoyment of this museum to a paleo-nerd. Not only have many items kept their original labels, some now centuries old, but just to read some of the names of those who collected them is a thrill.

It’s all well and good to read about the great men and women of palaeontology, but to actually see specimens collected by Agassiz, Huxley, Cope, Leidy, Buckland, and the dame of English palaeontology, Mary Anning.

Though there are fossils from all over the world, including some rare Burgess Shale specimens, most of the fossils on display are from regions around the UK.

The most iconic of these early dinosaurs was Iguanodon, one of the first found and described, explaining why there is a stone carving of one standing guard over the coat of arms above the front door (the second animal I judge to be a giant sloth). There is also a complete skeleton towering over the front door to the museum.

The Museum’s website takes up the story of its skeleton: ‘we have a letter sent on 26 October 1825 by Dr Gideon Mantell (the discoverer and describer of Iguanodon) to Professor Adam Sedgwick. The letter came with a parcel of specimens, including ... " casts of the best teeth of the Iguanodon in my collection; and of a horn (which you well doubtless remember) which the French [experts] declare is the bony base of a horn of a saurian animal – of course I shall claim it for the Iguanodon." Some of these original specimens are exhibited nearby.’

The museums specimen is the cast of Iguanodon bernissartensis, one of the complete individuals found by Louis Dollo, who: ‘described these dinosaur remains in the 1880s and kindly offered to Cambridge (through King Leopold II) a cast of one of the best Bernissart Iguanodon skeletons. The rearing pose of the animal conforms to Dollo’s original conception of the animal, but we now understand (through the work of a former Director of the Sedgwick Museum) that it would have normally walked with a more horizontal pose.’

There are not that many dinosaur skeletons left in the original kangaroo-pose, so for that alone the Iguanodon is worth a look.

The other species to start the world wide craze for dinosaurs in the 1820's was William Buckland's Megalosaurus and the museum proudly displays a skull fragment of M. bucklandi, a dinosaur that has been recently renamed Duriavenator bucklandi. 

The museum is really like a greatest hits album from the golden age of palaeontology. Row after row, cabinet after cabinet are brimming with fossils from the quarries of Europe. There are German pterosaurs; along with ichthyosaurus and pliosaurs from Whitby, Devonian fish from Canada, ancient stromatolites from Australia and tusked dicynodonts from South Africa- prehistoric remnants from the once global spanning English empire.

It is also worthwhile taking a walk outside all around the building as there are a number of gargoyles and stone depictions of prehistoric life everywhere.

The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences can be found AT University of Cambridge, Downing Street Cambridge. Admission is free, and it is open from 10am to 1pm, then 2pm to 5pm Monday to Friday; and 10am - 4pm on Saturdays. The museum is closed on Sundays and some public holidays so check the museums website for these on:

www.sedgwickmuseum.org

Crystal Palace

If paleo-geeks have a Mecca, surely it must be the old gardens of Crystal Palace in London. I’d been to the city before and completely missed out on visiting the concrete dinosaurs, designed and built by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1852. These were the first life-sized dinosaurs the world had ever seen and helped triggered the first real dinosaur craze.

As I was about to fly home the next day, I was determined not to miss them a second time!

Driving back into the capital from the Isle of Wight, it took a few hours to find Crystal palace, but eventually find it we did. Ever since I was a kid I’d wanted to see these dinosaurs. I cannot think of a single dinosaur book I’ve ever read that didn’t have an image of one of those iconic monsters like the snarling, rhino-like Megalosaurus creeping up on the lounging, arm outstretched Iguanodon.
Hopping out of the car there was only one word for how I felt….giddy.
My girlfriend Jo walked patiently up the hill to the gardens with me and listened patiently as I babbled on and on about what we were about to see and why it was so important. I was in fact so busy talking to her about the display that I almost walked into the very closed and very chained gate with a very large sign on it announcing the Crystal Park Garden would be closed for this day- and this day only.
I think my girlfriend could tell by the ashen colour my face had turned I was more than a little unhappy. Solemnly, we turned and walked away… well I turned, she’d already taken several steps away, perhaps distancing herself from the upcoming explosion of expletives she was certain was about to erupt and possibly get me arrested for public obscenity.
Half way back to the car, dragging my feet like some child who wasn’t allowed to ride the roller coaster, I turned and simply said…‘Not a chance!’
Running around the fence enclosing the park, I eventually found a gardener and told him I worked at a Dinosaur Museum, had been keen to see the gardens my whole life and was flying home the next day, perhaps for good, so there was no way I could come back. The guy said he couldn’t help me but if I went back to the chained side gate, he’d see what he could do.
10 minutes later a Crystal Palace security guard, along with his ferocious guard dog, opened the gate and let us both in, telling us to meet him back at the entrance in about 40 minutes so he could let us out again.
Champions!
Jo and I wandered around the garden and it occurred to me very few people have likely ever had the run of the place by themselves the way we did that day.
What a joy. Crunching our way down the gravel dirt paths on a warm sunny day with the flowers blooming, catching the well sculpted statues of prehistoric creatures emerging out of the foliage, with no screaming parents and bored kids to ruin it for us….it was bliss.
Originally the man-made lake all the figures surround was tidal and the lowering and rising water levels would revel and hide the animals at various time of the day. Todays the ‘lake’ is just a really large pond with a series of small islands that contain most of the exhibits, and as the science of palaeontology grew, the highly inaccurate dinosaur models became more and more ridiculed and the park slowly fell into decline. This process wasn’t helped when the glass monolith of Crystal Palace itself burnt down in 1936.
In the 1950’s the models were cut out of the gardens plant life that had overgrown them, cleaned up, repaired and put back on display, though not in their original positions. This process hadn’t been the best (on one model they’d used plasticine for repairs) and the garden soon started to fall apart again.
In 2002 a complete restoration of the sight was finished with many of the prehistoric (looking) plants that had originally been planted alongside the models replaced, while many of the missing or destroyed figures were substituted with new ones. London had finally woken up to what treasures these models were and they were soon historically listed, protecting them for future generations.
I have to say the workers have done a fine job as the garden is fantastic, full of nooks and crannies where you can spot some prehistoric beastie hiding behind an archaic monkey puzzle tree or antediluvian fern. The display is so well planned that often the animals are visible from numerous locations even though they seem to be completely surrounded by vegetation.
To begin with, as you walk down the path you cross a family of Megalocerous, including a huge stag with antlers that had originally been the real fossils until someone broke in and stole them years ago.
Next, feeding under some trees or beside a creek are herds of Anoplotherium (which look a little like camels even though they were probably more hippo-like) and Palaeotherium (tapir-looking critters). Its many of these smaller figures that had been missing for many years before the 2002 restoration.
Further along you catch a glimpse of the monstrous Megatherium reaching into a tree to feed. This model is often seen throughout the park due to its large size and the fact that there are few trees surrounding it.
As you turn the next corner, you catch a brief glimpse of a wall of scaly skin, which soon blossoms into the complete Megalosaurus. Easily the most inaccurate of all the parks animals, I have to say I didn’t care one bit as this massive creature just looks terrific on its grassy hill. Looking like a cross between a crocodile, a bear and an elephant, the statue is enormous and stands magesticly across the pond.
The path cuts down along the ‘lake’ and you get your first look at what the Megalosaurus is stalking, the equally scaled Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus that had, up until now, been hidden behind the bend in the creek and a number of strategically placed trees. All three dinosaurs are just so much bigger than any image credits them and I was happy to stand there all day and take them in. Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule and, with a deep, contented sigh we were soon back on the path.
Next the lake opens up and here is where you find the numerous aquatic creatures like ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, labyrinthodonts, dicynodonts, teleosaurs and numerous pterodactyls.
Far too soon our time was up and we made our way back to the gate where the security guard was waiting. He took one look at my huge grin and asked ‘enjoy yourself did you?’
Yes…yes I did!