Palaeontology International Rescue (well Wigan anyway) – Part 1

Last week, David Green (Curator of rock and minerals) and I went to Wigan & Leigh College Museum to have a look at the collection. Unfortunately, this small museum is closing down at the end of the month and is trying to find a home for its collections. The museum was formed in 1883 and [...]

How to tell the time

Everyone knows how to tell the time don’t they? Well, it gets a bit more complicated when we get on geological time. It is really easy to say something is so many millions of years old, but how do we know? Relative geological time One way of telling how old a rock is, is by [...]

Great A-level day with Altrincham Grammar School

A couple of weeks ago we had a great A-level day with students from Altrincham Grammar School. Louise Sutherland (from the learning team) and I met the group of students at about 10 and we went up to the Life Lab for the workshops. We began with the drawing fossils workshop, concentrating on bivalves, brachiopods [...]

Oldest land trackway discovered

The trackways found in Poland are 397 Million years old and push the record of these animals back millions of years. The crocodile-like animals mark the transition of animals from water onto land. They are so detailed that they even show digits.

The Fishy treasures of Manchester Museum

I’ve been having a look at the fossil fish collection here at the museum in preparation for a visit by a researcher from Bristol University next week and I’d forgotten how amazing it is! Dr Phil Andreson is coming up to Manchester to give a talk on The War Between Tooth and Food: Integrating experimental [...]