Saturday 27th October 2001 saw the group visit Dinosaur Isle, on the coast road just north of Sandown. We were greeted by a building shaped like a pterosaur, surrounded on three sides by water, the sea, a lake, and a large puddle in an area normally reserved for parking cars. The presence of sand-bags suggests this newly opened and part lottery-funded visitor attraction may be suffering from the millennium curse!
The museum opened in August 2001, barely 2 months before our visit, but everything seemed to be functioning well. In addition to the exhibits, the facility includes a preparatory room and education facilities, as well as a shop.
Having assembled in the lobby we were ushered into a gallery where a “Welcome to the Isle of Wight” information board provided information about the geological events which led to the formation of the Isle as we know it today. The area experienced extreme flooding during inter-glacial periods as a result of the Gulf Stream, causing ice melt and rising sea levels. The mudstone from the wetlands allowed the dinosaur fossils to survive the upheaval to the area resulting from the formation of the Alps. The resulting higher elevations were then cut off from the mainland by flooding during the most recent inter-glacial period.
The board stated that dinosaurs were present 110 million years ago, a very recent event in the Earth’s 5.5 billion year history! Adjacent to the welcome board was a useful time-chart for the benefit of non-geologists like us, tracking from quaternary through to pre-Cambrian eras. The lobby led to a time corridor, where cabinets displayed fossils and artefacts representing the periods, in sequence, back to the time of the dinosaurs. The Quaternary display explained that the ice age started 1.8million years ago and the most recent interglacial was a mere 10,000 years ago. There were superb displays of fossil remains of mammoth, bison, red deer, hippo, along with archaeological finds such as flint tools which would have been used by pre-historic man to hunt and butcher the animals. The tools on display were representative of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, and gave an interesting human perspective.
The corridor led to the Eocene display, 38-55 million years ago, when the Isle of Wight had enjoyed a tropical climate, occupying a similar geographical position to that of Florida today.
Fossil evidence was on display for mammals, birds, snails, ants, clams, fan palms, turtles, hornshell, sharks, eagle, rays, cockles, crabs, tower shells, scallop, fern, worm tubes and a superb example of a campanile gigantium, just like Adrian’s!
The next cabinet contained exhibits from the cretaceous period, some 90 million years ago, with ammonites, sponges, bivalves, ichthyosaurs, sea urchins, fish, sharks, brachiopods and micrusters.
At the far end of the time corridor, another cabinet displayed finds from a greensand sea from the cretaceous period, laid down 110 million years ago, when a warm shallow sea flooded the area. Excellent examples of turtles, ammonites, ichthyosaurs, sponges, corals, nautiloids, belamnites, lobsters, sea urchins, brittle stars, scallops and crabs were on show.
Other items on display from this era included bivalves, oysters, beetles, ferns, sharks, pliosaurs and gastropods.
Yvonne became distracted from the fossil evidence on show when she spotted a sandpit, designed to give the young (in age and at heart, apparently) a taste of palaeontology. Fully absorbed by brushing away at fake fossilised dinosaur bones, she was quite oblivious to the lengthening orderly queue of 5 to 7 year-olds behind her!
The time corridor neatly led to the main exhibition hall, housing the dinosaur exhibits, retaining the logic of the time sequence. Immediately we were confronted with a huge exhibit depicting artist’s impressions of anti diluvian times, surrounded by sketch portraits of the early pioneers of palaeontology, Robert Plot, George Cuvier, William Buckland, Richard Owen and Gideon Mantell. (No mention of Steven Spielberg, for those believing it all started with Jurassic Park!)
To the left was a dinosaur workshop, where conservation of fossil bones takes place. Unfortunately at the time of our visit, a Saturday, there was no activity, but this would provide a fascinating distraction to the main exhibits for weekday visitors.
Impressive mock-ups of the Isle of Wight’s “famous five” dinosaurs were on display, namely Neovenator, Eotyrannus, Iguanadon, Hypsilophodon and Sauropod, along with a variety of interactive dinosaur-related amusements for children and geologists alike. Pride of place, however, was taken by two huge wall-mounted exhibits, which took up the entire length of the main hall. First was the famous Barnes High Sauropod skeleton, with its fossilised remains mounted as found in situ in 1992. Alongside was “Pink Iggy”, a near-complete skeleton of an Iguanadon, stained pink by the mudstone in which it lay for 110million years prior to its recent excavation.
Suspended from the ceiling, a winged dinosaur, Istiodactylus, displayed an impressive cobweb between its open jaws, suggesting the poor thing had perished as a result of gaining insufficient nutrients from a diet of small spiders!
Afterwards we assembled in the education room for refreshments and an opportunity to identify an array of fossils, while Dan Pemberton, one of the curators of the museum, gave a brief talk prior to leading us on a beach walk towards Culver cliff. Some of us took the opportunity to visit the shop, which was well stocked with both souvenirs and more serious publications covering the palaeontology and geology of the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately there was no museum guidebook, apparently due to pressure of time to get the facilities open in time to catch the late holiday season. Dan assured us that a guide was being considered.
Overall we were impressed with the museum, it was sufficiently attractive to lure the casual visitor, while retaining plenty for amateur and serious palaeontologists and geologists to ponder over. We found the time corridor was a clever representation of the time scale, with human artefacts present in only the first display, demonstrating how brief our tenancy of the planet has been. The highlights were the magnificent displays of the Barnes High Sauropod and Pink Iggy, but it occurred to us that, without extending the building, there isn’t much room for future expansion should further dramatic finds of similar quality be excavated, as they hopefully will.
Thanks to Dan and his colleagues for their hospitality.
Yvonne Farrell Mike Bowler