Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Recently named by the Guardian as Britain's most family friendly museum, Oxford University's Museum of Natural History has a warm welcome for everybody. Follow the Megalosaurus footprints, one of the four dinosaurs to roam Oxfordshire in Jurassic times, along the grass verge from the Wellington Pine to enter the neo-Gothic building and find the UK's second largest Natural History collection. The Museum is open every day from 12 noon to 5pm throughout the year (except for Easter and Christmas holidays), admission is free and each visit offers a brand new experience. Visitors can stroke a stuffed cheetah and touch a giant ammonite from the widely accessible exhibits. Under a railway station style vaulted roof, decorated with wrought foliage and fruits, the story of life on earth unfolds; from single-celled organisms over 550 million years old to the development of multicellular animals and plants. The central court is dominated by a 45 foot long T rex and an Iguanodon skeleton. Another star exhibit is the stuffed Dodo bird which provided inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Beautiful displays of exotic butterflies celebrate the diversity of one of nature¹s most successful terrestrial animals, leading visitors up to the treasures tucked away on the first floor. Live exhibits of fat Madagascan hissing cockroaches, stick insects, a West African Emperor scorpion and a working bee hive show invertebrates in their natural habitats. Even higher up, the tower is home to live swifts (Apus apus), birds that spend their entire life in flight, sleeping on the wing and stopping only to breed. The balcony style of the first floor offers a fine vantage point to enjoy the columns of arches that define the central court from, each carved from a different British rock, with its collection of statues and busts of eminent scientists. Oxfordshire, in the heart of Mesozoic rocks, has limestone with a rich source of dinosaur fossils, Ardley Quarry having the greatest expanse of dinosaur footprints in Europe. The museum displays the stone used to fashion Oxford¹s architecture such as the coral rag used in our Saxon wall and the Bath stone of the Georgian terraces of Beaumont Street.

The ground floor cabinets display glittering minerals; a kaleidoscope of natural crystals including malachite from the Congo and gypsum from Tunisia. A fluorescent mineral booth displays rocks that glow in the dark. Our closest relative, 'Lucy', is displayed next to a humbling time line showing how recently Homo sapiens showed up on the fossil record (just 600,000 years ago)! The subsequent spread of modern human culture across the continents is celebrated in the Victorian atmosphere of the adjoining Pitt-Rivers ethnographic museum, where items from Captain Cook's second voyage lie amongst a totem pole and an Indian head dress.

The Museum is alive with the ideas that have shaped modern theories in Biology and is believed to be the home of Science¹s greatest victory, when Huxley successfully defended Darwin's theory of Evolution. Statues of Aristotle and Roger Bacon flank the exit, their purposeful stares inspiring many young visitors. No better place to exercise a new enthusiasm for science than in the gift shop, where a cuddly stuffed Dodo makes a super souvenir!

Lita Doolan (DI Reviewer), 14/11/05

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