Museum News
Winter 2009/10 edition of Trilobite available online
Trilobite is the newsletter of the Sedgwick Museum and the Friends of the Sedgwick Museum. It contains information about upcoming events in the Museum and the activities (including talks and field trips) of the Friends.
The latest edition Trilobite is available in PDF 
format (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) via the link below.
Download the Winter 2009/10 edition of Trilobite
Previous editions:
Download the Summer 2009 edition of Trilobite
Sedgwick Museum Schools Service News
Planning a school visit to the Sedgwick Museum? An updated version of the Sedgwick Museum booklet "Information for Teachers" is now available to download. The pack contains essential information to help teachers planning a class visit to the Sedgwick Museum, along with information about loan boxes and other resources that can be used in the classroom.
Darwin Rocks
Remarkable exhibition reveals Darwin's life-long love of stone collecting.
Charles Darwin is best known for his work on species, but a new exhibition opening at Cambridge University this week reveals another side to one of its most famous sons.
Conference: Darwin in the Field: Collecting, Observation and Experiment
This two day conference will take place in Cambridge on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th July 2009 and will allow participants to explore different aspects of Darwin as a collector and an observer of the natural world.
The programme of twelve speakers will illuminate the ways in which Charles Darwin used the various collections he made and the notebooks he kept to try to understand the World around him.
Discussing Darwin on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg came to Cambridge in November 2008 to record interviews for a series of four programme's on the life of Charles Darwin for BBC Radio 4's In Our Time series.
Seismic Events at the Sedgwick Museum
Thanks to a public engagement grant from the Institute of Physics and funding from the Friends of the Sedgwick Museum, the Sedgwick Museum has been able to set up a seismological station to record the shock waves created by earthquakes.
Migration of the Giant Elk
One of the Museum's most well-loved specimens has been re-located to create space for the new Darwin the Geologist exhibition.
Free New Learning Resources for Secondary Science
"Ideas and Evidence at the Sedgwick Museum" is a pack of resources including teachers notes, high quality images, activity templates and worksheets which deal explicitly with the ideas and evidence content in the KS3 curriculum in the context of rocks and fossils.
In Darwin's Footsteps on James Island (Isla Santiago)
A pioneering trip to the Galapagos Islands by University of Cambridge Geologists has begun an investigation of the cause of a unique volcanic phenomenon.
DCMS/Wolfson Foundation Grant Awarded to the Sedgwick Museum
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences has been awarded £28,000 to assist in the redevelopment of its entrance and galleries to provide easier access for disabled visitors.
Eocursor, a 200 Million year old missing link!
An expedition led by Dr David Norman, director of the Sedgwick Museum, to the Karoo Basin in the Free State area of South Africa, resulted in the discovery of a dinosaur new to science.
Charles Darwin the Geologist: An Exhibition
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge has been awarded a £519,000 grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The money will fund a new permanent exhibition celebrating Charles Darwin's work as a geologist and displaying the Museum's unique collection of rock and mineral specimens collected by Darwin during his voyage as ship's naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle.
Tyrannosaurus rex comes to the Sedgwick Museum
The skull of Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the most fearsome and well known of the dinosaurs, is now on permanent display.
T. rex was a formidable predator having a metre-and-a-half long skull, strong, dagger-like teeth and powerful jaws that would have been strong enough to splinter bone. It was one of the largest carnivores to have walked the Earth and lived more than 65 million year ago during the Cretaceous period.
120 Million Year Old Hip Replacement!
One of the Sedgwick Museum's dinosaurs gets a long-awaited adjustment.
Iguanodon bernissartensis is a 11 metre long, 5 metre tall dinosaur that dominates the entrance to the Sedgwick Museum at Cambridge. The skeleton was donated to the University in 1909, by Leopold II (King of the Belgians) as part of the celebrations in Cambridge associated with the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin. During the reconstruction of this skeleton and its mounting for exhibition in Brussels (one of the first complete dinosaur skeletons ever viewed), a few mistakes were made. One of these is mistakes is being rectified at present.
£70,301 to develop an exhibition explaining the young Charles Darwin's work as a . . . Geologist!
The Sedgwick Museum is to benefit from Designation Challenge Funding to enhance its internationally important collections.
The MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council), as a strategic funder of museums, is making the award (as part of a package of 34 to museums around the country) to ensure that outstanding collections can be enjoyed and appreciated by as many people as possible.
Sedgwick Museum gains national quality standard
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences has been officially 'Accredited' by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council (MLA).
The Museum Accreditation Scheme sets nationally agreed standards for all museums in the UK. The Sedgwick Museum's award proves that it measures up, meeting the guidelines on how it is run, how it looks after its collections and the services it provides to its visitors.
Was Megarachne the world's largest spider?
New information on fossilised South American giant.
Megarachne, a 300 million year old fossil from the Carboniferous of Argentina was described in 1980 at the world's largest spider. The idea of a huge tarantula-like spider with a body length of almost 34 cm and an estimated leg span of 50 cm caught the imagination of the public and scientists alike.
Giant dinosaur jigsaw puzzle
Sedgwick Museum's dinosaur reinstalled after 'make-over'
After seven weeks of painstaking work by staff and volunteers the dinosaur Iguanodon
is ready for re-installation in the Sedgwick Museum.
Standing more than five metres tall, Iguanodon is a giant jigsaw puzzle of bone casts. Each part of this 120 million year-old giant has been cleaned and repainted by hand using colours that more closely represent the original fossil, to enhance the specimen as a teaching aid and bring the dinosaur to life.
Pliosaur arrives from Colombia
The remains of a pliosaur from Bogota in Colombia arrived at the Sedgwick Museum's Conservation Facility
this week, where they will be the subject of a three year study by visiting scientist Marcela Gomez from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and our resident marine reptile specialist Dr Leslie Noè. The specimen was transported to the Museum with the generous support of the Friends of the Sedgwick Museum.
