Editor's Review - Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge

Tel: 01223 333456

The Sedgwick Museum in Downing Street is the oldest of the University’s museums and the one that my family have visited the most. Thanks to funding from Cambridge City Council it is now able to open longer on Saturdays
and offer new events, making it much more accessible to families with young children. Entrance to the Museum is free, so if you plan a visit and the children have had enough after 20 minutes, you can happily leave, knowing
that you can come back another day and see some more.

I would suggest that you pick up a Sedgwick Museum Top 10 Trail leaflet on the way in to provide some focus for exploring the museum, otherwise it is hard to know where to start. This will take you to the 10 most popular specimens. We found the Ichthyosaur or ‘fish lizard’ fossil that was found in Mepal in 2001 really interesting. It lived at the time of the dinosaurs but was a marine reptile, rather like a dolphin but with four swimming limbs. It’s hard to imagine that it is about 140 million years old. Other highlights were the cast of the fossil of the world’s largest spider, complete with 50cm of hairy leg span and enormous fangs - don’t worry, it’s not been around for about 300 million years - and the 800 year old butter. Whilst most of the exhibits are displayed in sealed cases, there are large touchable specimens around the museum and a special handling trolley, containing a variety of fossils for children to examine at close quarters.

Summer 2005