An update from our Curator of Natural Science, Sarah King, on the team’s involvement with this year’s Yorkshire Fossil Festival.

A couple of weeks ago, Natural Sciences decamped to the seaside for the weekend, for the inaugural Yorkshire Fossil Festival. This was held outside the Rotunda Museum, not far from the seafront.

A host of organisations took part, from the Natural History Museum in London to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

We took along some Pleistocene (Ice Age) material from the UK and Europe, including bison, hippo, wolf, cave lion and a huge cave bear skull – at around 50cm long even the other museums there had to admit it was the biggest they’d seen!

It was a really successful 3 days, with over 600 primary school children on the Friday, and over 4000 visitors across the Saturday and Sunday. A popular talking point was Horace the travelling pliosaur cinema, all the way from Dorset.

I sneaked a peek inside to experience life inside a pliosaur’s belly – but was sworn to secrecy.

It is hoped that the Fossil Festival will become annual, and that it will move around different venues in Yorkshire – so maybe one day you too can sit in Horace’s belly.

Huge thanks to Learning Facilitators Joan and Julie for the schools sessions on Friday, and to volunteers Andrew and Katie for help across the weekend.

For more information on the Festival visit the website here or see coverage of the event on Scarborough TV News here.