Thursday 1 May 2014

The Rotunda

 Scarborough Museum Services have been restructured over the past decade.  The geology collections are now housed in the Rotunda Museum at the end of Valley Road.
 Amongst the collections are two bones collected from the Taynton Limestone.  This one is catalogued SCARB-2000-1883 and carries a label 26G and another old hand written label "Bone of A Pterosaur".  This bone is a proximal Humerus from an unidentified pterosaur species.
 The second bone is catalogued SCARB-2000-1970 and has an old hand written label "Bones of Pterodactyl".  This is a rhamphorhynchoid wing metacarpal of an Middle Jurassic pterosaur.
A third specimen is on display and this is the Cast of the Pterodactylus antiquus specimen from Mannheim.  This was the first pterosaur to be published by Collini in 1784.

The Rotunda Museum is well worth a visit if you are in the Scarborough area.  It has very well organised displays and a wealth of local Jurassic material.  There is also a lot of information about the people who collected and published work on the specimens from the Yorkshire coast.

http://www.scarboroughmuseumstrust.org.uk/ 

Just a few streets away on Eastborough is Richard Widdowson's "Gems" shop where there are exceptional quality local fossil specimens for sale.  This fossil coast has some interesting geology and archaeology which should not be missed.