Collections

Palaeontology Collections

Curator: Dr Liz Harper

Collections Manager: Dan Pemberton

Collections Assistant, Palaeontology: Matthew Riley

To learn more about the palaeontology collections, please contact Matthew Riley.

Mineralogy and Petrology Collections

Curator: Professor Michael Carpenter

Collections Manager: Dan Pemberton

Collections Assistant, Mineralogy and Petrology: Mr Steve Laurie

To learn more about the Mineralogy and Petrology collections, please contact Steve Laurie.

Conservation Facility

The Geological Conservation Unit was founded in 1991 as the conservation unit for collections of the Sedgwick Museum and the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge. The Unit has a fully equipped laboratory where we do conservation work and prepare objects for display.

The specimens on display in the gallery are just a fraction of the entire collection. Most of the Museum's specimens are stored in environmentally controlled rooms at the Conservation Unit.

Research Activities

Into the Field Again: Re-Examining Charles Darwin's 1835 Geological Work on Isla Santiago (James Island) in the Galápagos Archipelago

A dispute over the provenance of some of Charles Darwin’s rock collection, now housed at Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, led to an expedition to the Galapagos two years ago that in turn has resulted in an entirely new analysis of the geology of the Archipelago. The specimens are part of a collection of some 2500 rocks, minerals and fossils collected by Darwin on his 1831–1836 voyage aboard HMS Beagle.

Read the web story in full ...

Download the full article in PDF format as published in Earth Sciences History, v. 28, No.1, 2009, pp. 1-31.

Dinosaur acquisition

Work on Scelidosaurus, a very early armoured dinosaur collected from the Lower Jurassic of Dorset has produced several preliminary papers (Norman, 2001). Grants from the PRISM Fund (Preservation of Industrial and Scientific Material) and Trinity College, Cambridge have allowed the Sedgwick Museum to purchase a very important partial skeleton of this animal; this will support the research effort and eventually form the focus of a new display.

Mepal Crocodile and Ichthyosaur

Important fossilised remains were discovered in the Cambridgeshire fens at Mepal, near Ely during 2001. The find consisted of the fragmentary remains of a crocodile (an incomplete mandible preliminarily identified as Steneosaurus sp.) and the considerable remains of an ichthyosaur ( Brachypterygius sp.), including much of the skull and mandible, teeth, shoulder girdle and ribs. The remains were discovered by two local amateur collectors, Ed Mallett and Serena Queenie, who notified the Museum and helped us to recover the bones. THe fossils were kindly donated to the Sedgwick Museum by OceanFresh (UK) Ltd, the owners and developers of the land at Mepal.

Collection from the site included the production of site ground-plans, careful numbering of the elements, photographs, environmental data, and a sedimentary core.

>> View the poster (PDF, 0.8MB) about this discovery (presented at the 51st 'Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy' (SVPCA), and the 12th 'Symposium of Paleontological Preparation and Conservation' (SPPC) held consecutively at the Oxford University Museum between 15th and 19th September 2003).