Over the last few months David Tucker, County Museums Adviser and Richard Edmonds Jurassic Coast Earth Science Manager have been working on a series of new Jurassic Coast museum exhibitions. 
This work has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the South West Museums Hub.
At Budleigh Salterton in Devon a new set of interpretation panels have been installed along with refurbished display cases and several new fossil and geological specimens. Similar work has been done at the Allhallows Museum, Honiton where not only have new fossils been provided, but the museum’s fossilised Hippopotamus display has been refreshed.
In Dorset Richard and David have worked with the Bridport Museum to create a new Jurassic Coast Gallery in the museum. This gallery will include examples of the local brittle starfish and ammonites, backed up by an interactive computer CD interpreting the whole coast and, it is hoped, in the near future an impressive fossilised plesiosaur.
On Portland a new display has been created picking up on some of the Isle’s exceptional geological features, including very rare fossilised plants called cycads, and examples of fossilised stromatolites, examples of very early simple life that still exist to this day.
In Wareham a Jurassic Coast display has been created telling the story of the local extractive industries and displaying fossils of the type we know lay in beds hundreds of feet beneath the town.
Over the next two years Dorset and East Devon’s coastal museums will be receiving many new exciting fossil specimens as a result of this on-going work.
Written by David Tucker.
Team Contact Richard Edmonds, Earth Science Manager.
