Yorkshire’s Jurassic World, Yorkshire Museum, York, UK
“THEY say that the Jurassic Coast is in the south – we like to say it is in Yorkshire,” says Andy Woods, senior curator of the Yorkshire Museum in the UK. “We’ve got some of the best Jurassic geology in the country.”
You would expect a bit of regional one-upmanship, but this is no empty boast – as a new exhibition called Yorkshire’s Jurassic World shows. The county’s contribution to the understanding of the geology and palaeontology of the Jurassic era is at least as important as that of the more storied deposits around Lyme Regis in Dorset. The geology is essentially the same since Jurassic rocks are found in a diagonal band across Britain, from Lyme Regis to Redcar.
Advertisement
During the Jurassic, 201 to 145 million years ago, what is now Britain was much further south, around the latitude north Africa is today. The global climate was several degrees warmer and Yorkshire was tropical. Early on, it was at the bottom of a deep sea; 25 million years later, plate tectonics thrust it upwards to become a lush, riverine landscape roamed by dinosaurs. By the end of the period, it was a shallow coral reef.
All three ecosystems left abundant sedimentary rocks stuffed with fossils. The best are on show here, and are important enough for David Attenborough to make the day trip from London to open the exhibition.
This latter-day Jurassic safari opens gently with the remains of the reef ecosystem that covered the area from 163 to 145 million years ago. Bivalves, ammonites, belemnites and corals dominate, plus tantalising hints of the teeth and bones of bigger, fiercer things.
The really spectacular stuff is in the next section, as we enter the deep ocean. This dimly lit space is full of what the Victorians called sea dragons – marine reptiles that were to the Jurassic ocean what dinosaurs were to the land.
The star of the show is the skeleton of Temnodontosaurus, an 8-metre-long predatory ichthyosaur. The skeleton was discovered near Whitby in 1857 and has been in the museum ever since. I recall ogling it as a dino-mad kid, but its new setting makes it even more awe-inspiring.
The find comes from a seminal period in earth sciences when, despite a prevailing creationist culture, scientists were starting to realise that Earth was extremely old and once inhabited by long-extinct beasts. Among those pioneers of geology were the members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, who founded the museum in 1830.
“Yorkshire’s Jurassic World is a nice reminder that palaeontology is one science still open to all”
The museum had a ready supply of fossils, not just from expeditions but from the alum mines along the coast. Alum was a vital raw material for the dyeing industries springing up among the cotton mills. As the miners processed Jurassic shale, they came across the remains of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pliosaurs – and quickly realised that the fossils were more valuable than alum.
Next to the monster is another exquisite fossil, on display for the first time. It shows the gentler side of sea dragons: skeletons of six ichthyosaur embryos inside their mother. It is one of a handful of fossils that show ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young.
“The huge sea reptiles are as impressive as any I have seen anywhere – they are brilliantly displayed,” said Attenborough at the launch. He’s right.
The final third of the show is dedicated to dry land. Because dinosaur bones are rare in Yorkshire, many of the exhibits here are borrowed from the south. To compensate, the museum makes good use of tech with a 3D animation of the theropod Megalosaurus “walking” in its own fossilised footsteps, plus a VR encounter with a sauropod. Attenborough was first to try the VR headset. “If that isn’t sensational, I don’t know what you want out of life,” he said.
Yorkshire’s Jurassic World is a great permanent addition to the UK museum scene. It is also a nice reminder that palaeontology is one science still open to all. On display is a huge vertebra from the tail of an unknown brontosaurus-like sauropod. It was found by amateur fossil hunter Alan Gurr near Whitby in 1995.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Here be sea dragons”
