New Exhibition at Wrexham County Borough Museum

This week sees the arrival of some of the oldest objects to appear in Wrexham Museum: fossils of the first life forms to exist on planet Earth.

The ‘Trapped in Time’ exhibition reveals how fossils chart the development of life on planet Earth from the first primitive life forms that appeared 3.6 billion years ago up to the appearance of the earliest hominids four million years ago. The result is an exhibition that manages to squeeze this huge span of time into one gallery. Highlights of the exhibition include:

• A collection of trilobites ( Silurian period, 443-416 million years ago)
• A shoal of fish (Devonian period, 416-359 million years ago)
• Plants from the Brymbo Fossil Forest (Carboniferous period, 359-299 million years ago)
• A dinosaur footprint (Jurassic period, 199-145 million years ago)
• A dinosaur egg (Cretaceous period, 145-65 million years ago)
• A mammoth bone and tooth (Cenozoic period, the last 65 million years)

Jonathan Gammond, Access & Interpretation Officer, said: “We are pleased to be hosting this fantastic exhibition of fossils. Fossils are incredible: works of art and yet created almost by chance through force of nature; in fact it’s a huge stroke of geological luck that any of these fossils exist at all!

Whether you are a keen fossil collector, are mad about dinosaurs or are someone with a general interest in natural history then this exhibition is for you!”

The fossils come from some of the top geological collections in Britain including: The World Museum, National Museums Liverpool; The Lapworth Museum of Geology, the University of Birmingham; The British Geological Survey; The Manchester Museum, the University of Manchester and the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. The exhibition has been curated by Dr Kathryn Riddington, keeper of Natural History at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester.

The Trapped in Time exhibition is accompanied by a programme of gallery activities and special events:

• A sliding microscope allowing you to view selected fossils more closely
• The Dinosaur ID game to test your knowledge of the big beasts of the Jurassic
• An ‘amber tree’ with little beasties trapped in amber waiting to be discovered
• Two half-term fossil activity sessions on May 28^th and 29^th.
• A special workshop for primary school children
• A Museums at Night dinosaur themed sleepover on May 17^th.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The exhibition runs until July 24^th.

For information on opening times and directions, telephone 01978 297 460