Learning More ... the Displays of the Central Aisle

Learning more... The displays of the central aisle

The displays of the The redesign of the central aisle For many years the central aisle of the central aisle Museum languished as a home to ageing As you walk into the Museum for the temporary displays. In the run up to 2000 first time, you are struck by the sight of things began to change, and it was two large dinosaurs towering over you. proposed that this area should be The Iguanodon and Tyrannosaurus rex dedicated to showing off the collections, have greeted thousands of visitors over introducing visitors to the scale of the the years and provide a spectacular Museum’s holdings, and outlining the most introduction to the Museum, but they famous features of the building. To reflect are not the only wonders to be found the historical nature of the collections it here. was important that the displays retained the feel of the Victorian era, but with an Each case exhibits treasures from the updated and accessible outlook. collections, and illustrates some of the most famous features of the Museum: its connection with Alice, the dodo, and the celebrated Oxfordshire dinosaurs.

A cast of the skeleton of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex looms over the central aisle of the main court. The skeleton was found in the 65 million year old Hell Creek Formation of Harding County, South Dakota.The fibreglass The Iguanodon skeleton of the central aisle at its reopening in 2000. cast was brought into the Museum in several pieces and assembled Table of contents ‘flatpack’ style in the The cases of the central aisle are arranged building. by number in clockwise direction starting from the Alice case; this leaflet is arranged What is ‘Learning more’? to follow that order. ‘Learning more’ presents a series of articles about the Museum and its collections. It is The real Alice...... 22 designed for older students, teachers, The Oxford dodo...... 2 researchers, and anyone who wants to find Belonging to Professor Buckland...... 3 out more about particular aspects of the On the trail of the Oxfordshire dinosaurs...... 33 Museum’s work and its history. Megalosaurus: the first dinosaur ...... 4. This article introduces the displays of the Camptosaurus: the Cumnor dinosaur...... 44 central aisle of the Museum and can be Cetiosaurus: the Oxford brontosaur...... 55 considered a brief summary of its collections and most famous features. Iguanodon...... 55 Eustreptospondylus...... 66 ‘Learning more’ articles are free, and available to all for educational, non-profit Minerals...... 66 purposes. The Museum retains copyright Insects...... 77 of all material used in this leaflet. Biodiversity...... 77

© Oxford University Museum of Natural History Page 1 Learning more... The displays of the central aisle The real Alice The Oxford dodo Charles Dodgson, better Dead as a dodo! The remains of the known as Lewis Carroll, dodo at Oxford are one of the greatest was a regular visitor to treasures of the Museum. the Museum. The The story of the dodo is one of the most specimens he saw there famous examples of extinction. It lived on the inspired the famous Alice island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and books, and some can still Alice Liddell was discovered by Europeans in 1598. By be seen on display today. The real Alice 1680 the flightless bird was extinct. On a sunny afternoon in 1862, an Oxford don led a rowing expedition up the Thames. He The dodo is the most famous of all the creatures was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and the party to have become extinct in included Alice Liddell, aged 10. During the historical times. It was afternoon Dodgson spun out a series of immortalised in Alice's fantastic yarns incorporating friends and Adventures in Wonderland, familiar places in Oxford. and was a favourite for Dodgson who had a ...the rabbit actually took a watch stammer: Do-do-dodgson. out of his pocket... Some live dodos were brought to Europe, and one of the birds, acquired by John Tradescant, The white rabbit and others (left), and the was exhibited in his London museum. His lesser flamingo (right). collections came to Oxford where now only the mummified head and left foot remain.

The specimens in the Alice case all feature in Dodgson’s books. The Oxford dodo Alice Liddell’s father was Dean of Christ The mummified Church, where Dodgson was a Fellow, and head of the had been a keen supporter of the project to Oxford dodo, build a natural history museum in the city. together with the Dodgson was a regular visitor to the Museum bones of its skull and often brought Alice and her sisters to see and foot. the exhibits. He began to incorporate the creatures from the displays into the tales he told his young friends. He was persuaded to The slimline dodo write down his stories, and the result, A few dodos were brought alive to Europe published in 1865 under the name of Lewis in the early 1600s. Given the wrong food, Carroll, became the world favourite Alice’s they became obese and so artists depicted Adventures in Wonderland and Through the them as slow and comically clumsy (left). Looking Glass (1871). Modern research, however, shows them to have been rather ‘slim-line’ (right).

The name ‘Lewis Carroll’ may sound very different to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, but it can be traced quite logically to its root: Carolus is the Latin for Charles and Lewis = Ludovic = Lutwidge.

Belonging to On the trail of the Professor Buckland Oxfordshire dinosaurs Dean William Buckland founded the In 1997, dozens of dinosaur scientific teaching of geology in Oxford, trackways were discovered at and brought together what would Ardley, near Oxford. The become the core of the Museums footprints were cleaned, geological collections. measured, mapped, and cast to form a permanent record of the Buckland was a man of discovery on the lawn outside enormous energy, being the Museum. both a member of the In the spring of 1997, a Birmingham clergy and a brilliant schoolteacher contacted the University after scientist. His account of learning of the presence of dinosaur footprints Megalosaurus bones in the quarries at Ardley. Staff of the Museum from Stonesfield in were sent to measure and describe the site, Oxfordshire was the first and cast the better trackways. scientific description of a dinosaur. Surveying the site Past meets present One of the technicians from the Museum casts her eye The specimens in this display were over the massive Cetiosaurus collected by Buckland himself. The skull of footprints at Ardley. All of the the cave hyaena that is pictured in the footprints were carefullly hands of Buckland in the above painting is cleaned and mapped; the best were cast in the field and currently on display in the main court. brought back to the Museum.

The Ardley site is made up of a Jurassic limestone that formed some 168 million years ago. The area around Ardley was then a region of mudflats and lagoons with a shallow sea The skull of the cave hyaena, in the hands of Buckland (left), and on display in the main court (right). extending north and west, into what are now the Cotswolds. The footprint bed thus records The display highlights the importance of the a brief event in the history Oxfordshire. historical content of a museum collection. It Footprints from the past focuses on some of the most interesting specimens in the geology collections at Oxford Between 30 and 40 trackways are present at that Buckland himself had discovered. Ardley, some up to 200 metres long. The Included are skulls of a woolly rhinoceros and trackways can be linked to the skeletal remains of two types of dinosaur known from the a cave hyaena, ancient coprolites (fossilised Jurassic: Megalosaurus and Cetiosaurus. faeces), ammonites, fossil plants, and an interesting array of curios. Installing the footprints on the Museum lawn This rather ghoulish specimen A60 metre long is a bird. It has literally been trackway, made up of turned to stone, together with casts of the footprints of its nest and eggs. the giant carnivorous They were petrified in the dinosaur Megalosaurus is mineral rich waters of the displayed on the lawn in Matlock Springs, in Derbyshire. front of the Museum.

© Oxford University Museum of Natural History Page 3 Learning more... The displays of the central aisle Megalosaurus: Camptosaurus: the first dinosaur the Cumnor dinosaur Megalosaurus The skeleton of this herbivorous was the first dinosaur was found in 153 million dinosaur ever year old Kimmeridge Clay at Cumnor to be described Hurst, near Oxford, in 1879. scientifically. It was was the work of William Buckland, Oxford’s first Reader in Geology. The Camptosaurus bones came from nearby Stonesfield. prestwichii

The first described dinosaur from anywhere in The unique skeleton of Camptosaurus was the world, was found in Oxfordshire. It was a discovered in 1879 by workmen in a brickpit 9 metre long carnivore that stood on its hind on Cumnor Hurst, 2.5 miles south west of legs; now called Megalosaurus bucklandi, or Oxford. The name comes from the Greek ‘Buckland’s giant-lizard’. kamptos meaning ‘flexible’, and sauros, The jaw of Megalosaurus ‘lizard’; its ‘flexibility’ came from the First described by Buckland in incomplete fusion of its vertebrae and skull, a publication of 1824 (left), and and suggests it could have been a juvenile. currently on display (above). Vertebrae of Camptosaurus When Buckland collected the bones that are A lithograph from the original now on display, he was unsure of their description of this dinosaur significance. When the great French showing its vertebrae; the fact comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier visited that they weren’t fused gave it Oxford, he realised that the Stonesfield bones its name of ‘flexible lizard’. belonged to a giant animal resembling a lizard. Following Cuvier’s visit, Buckland The Oxford specimen is the most complete started describing the fossils in earnest, and member of the genus known from Europe, he published an account of them in 1824. and is the earliest known representative of the large-bodied, usually quadrupedal, Misconceptions herbivorous dinosaurs later represented by The first published record of a dinosaur the iguanodontids. bone was in Dr Robert Plot’s 1677 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Discovering Camptosaurus Recognisable today as part of a single thigh The skeleton of Camptosaurus was found bone of Megalosaurus, Plot wondered if it in the 153 million year old Kimmeridge could have come from an elephant brought Clay. The bones were dug out and cast to Britain by the Romans, but concluded it aside, until a workman took a bag of them was the petrified bone of a giant. to George Rolleston, the Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Oxford. Recognising their importance, he secured them for the University.

Joseph Prestwich An early reconstruction of Professor of Geology at Megalosaurus on display (above), and Oxford, who announced the in gardens at Sydenham in Kent discovery of the dinosaur (right); we now know it as a bipedal that bears his name. dinosaur, similar to Tyrannosaurus rex.

© Oxford University Museum of Natural History Page 4 Learning more... The displays of the central aisle Cetiosaurus: Eustreptospondylus the Oxford brontosaur The skeleton on display is the most Cetiosaurus was a 27 metre long complete example of its kind herbivorous dinosaur with a long neck anywhere in Europe,and was found and tail, and four massive legs. The just up the road from the Museum. Museum houses limb bones and vertebrae of this giant, which were collected in the 1860s near Oxford. Cetiosaurus was a sauropod dinosaur; it had four massive walking legs, a long, slender neck with a tiny head and an equally long, slender Eustreptospondylus tail. Dinosaurs like Cetiosaurus were once oxoniensis thought to have lived in water, but now it is The skeleton of Eustreptospondylus is the believed that they lived on land, browsing on most complete specimen of a Jurassic low vegetation. Footprints made by carnosaur in all of Europe. Carnosaurs were a Cetiosaurus are found at Ardley (see page 3). group of heavily built, bipedal, predatory, Cetiosaurus at the Museum carnivorous and carrion feeding dinosaurs with reduced fore-limbs, large heads on short The bones of Cetiosaurus have been on display since their discovery in the 1800s (left) and today (right). necks and sharp cutting teeth. Installing the display Fitting together the bones of a dinosaur skeleton can be a bit like doing a jigsaw - you know you have the bones in the right place when they fit together perfectly! For the first time Eustreptospondylus has been mounted in a life-like pose, walking as it would done, on its two hind legs. Also displayed is the Discovering a dinosaur life-size reconstruction Most of the specimens on display were of an adult that figured found in the 1860s by Mr Chapman, a prominently in the watchmaker who ‘discovered and rescued BBC series Walking the monster Cetiosaurus at [Enslow with Dinosaurs. Bridge]. He was on a botanising expedition with his son, and had just got off the train as the first fragment was disclosed by the Fitting together the pickaxe. He found the foreman, stopped Eustreptospondylus jigsaw. the digging, and telegraphed to John Phillips, Professor of Geology and the first Curator of the University Museum, who Eustreptospondylus was discovered in 1871 by super-intended the removal of the workmen at a long-vanished brickpit in enormous bones to the Museum. The credit Summertown, just one and a half miles from went to Phillips, no one remembered the Museum, and was acquired by James Chapman’. Parker, an Oxford bookseller, publisher and Bones of Cetiosaurus have also been found amateur geologist. The brickpit was the source at Woodstock a few miles north east of of some of the bricks used in the construction Oxford as recently as the 1980s. of the Museum.

Iguanodon Minerals Azurite As you enter A modern reconstruction of The Oxford mineral the Museum Iguanodon. collections are among you are greeted the oldest and finest in by the sight of a the country. This introductory cast of a huge display exhibits only a tiny fraction of Iguanodon skeleton the collection that comprise over towering over the court. This display 30,000 specimens. tracks the history of the first Minerals are everywhere, making up all the discoveries of the Iguanodon. rocks of the Earth’s crust. There are over In the early 1820s Gideon Mantell, a Sussex 4,000 different minerals, each a natural country doctor and avid fossil collector, inorganic chemical element or compound acquired a series of unusual fossil teeth, but with a unique combination of chemical was unable to identify them. After seeing the composition and crystal structure. teeth the famous French anatomist, Cuvier, The display shows the amazing suggested they might have belonged to some array of colours found in the giant plant-eating reptile. a. mineral world. c. g. Mantell found a bone e. spike and assumed it was a rhinoceros-like b. d. horn that rested on f. Iguanodon’s nose a. Zircon, b. Fire opal, (left); in fact it was the c. Heulandite, d. Sulphur, e. Malachite, dinosaur’s thumb. f. Fluorite, g. Labradorite, h. Kyanite h.

During a visit to the Hunterian Museum in The minerals in the Museum’s collection come London, Mantell was shown a skeleton of an from mines and quarries, road-cuttings and iguana, a large South American lizard. So other places where rocks are exposed. Long striking were the similarities between the ago they were studied for their supposed teeth of the lizard and his fossils, that he was healing properties by medical students. Today certain he had discovered a gigantic extinct they are an invaluable resource for research reptile. He named it Iguanodon, from the by geologists, mineralogists, and other word iguana, and the ancient Greek odous scientists throughout the University. meaning ‘tooth’. Minerals in our world The skeleton in the court The mineral kingdom is valuable to us all The skeleton in the court is a cast of one of in our everyday lives. Some minerals are the herd of 31 individuals found Belgium in strikingly beautiful - the prettiest, most 1878. The skeleton has been posed to show durable and rarest may be cut as the animal with its gemstones. Others are the raw materials tail resting on for making everything from toothpaste and the ground, but if washing powder to computers and you look at it aeroplanes. Our civilization depends on the closely, you can exploitation of minerals. d. see that its tail a. Cassiterite, b. Goethite, b. would actually c. Bauxite, d. Galena, have had to been sources of tin, iron, aluminium broken to stand and lead. in this way. a. c.

Insects Morpho butterfly Biodiversity Australian Seventy five per cent of all The zoological bee-eater animal species are insects, collections of the and one or more of these University originated species goes extinct every in the seventeenth day. The Oxford collections century. They include are among the top ten worldwide, and specimens of great scientific date from the early eighteenth century. and historical value. This display Love them or hate them, insects are by far the celebrates biodiversity, and illustrates most successful animals on Earth; they how vulnerable life on the planet is to individually outnumber humans billions to human influences. one, and scientists discover thousands of new Living things have evolved into millions of species each year. different forms, producing the variety of life Grasshopper we call biodiversity. There are probably Hawk moth somewhere between 5 and 12 million living species, but only about 1.7 million have been Orange-tipped described. butterfly Rhinoceros beetle Hermit crab A few of the specimens on display in the Museum.

The good and the bad Brain coral Most of us notice insects only when we are Scallop shell bitten or stung, but we could not manage without them. They are a vital food source Blue swimmer crab Nautilus for birds, fish and other animals, they are About 97% of living things are important pollinators and excellent invertebrates - animals without backbones. recyclers; they make honey, wax and silk. Besides the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, the collections But insects can harm humans too: they can contain most of the Museum’s non-insect eat up to a fifth of the world’s crops each invertebrates including crustaceans, year, and carry diseases including malaria. molluscs, sponges and corals. Systematics, the classification of the natural Jewels in the crown world, is essential for the study and The entomological collections are of great conservation of biodiversity. To describe its scientific importance, containing breadth, scientists divide living things into thousands of historically significant groups; traditionally these have been the five specimens. Among them are the oldest kingdoms, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, surviving pinned insect, and the tsetse fly and other single-celled organisms. Everything collected in Africa by David Livingstone. in this display is from the animal kingdom.

The tsetse fly The stars of the collection Glossina The collections held in the Museum are a morsitans vital resource for scientists studying evolution, systematics and the diversity of life. They include the original specimen of the white rhinoceros, and crabs collected Important historic specimens include the tsetse fly collected in by Charles Darwin on the voyage of The Central Africa by David Livingstone. Beagle, and of course, the dodo.