Blog Posts From Nature Live Tagged With dinosaur

Sun, sea and seaweed for lunch?!

Charlotte - Nature Live host — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:19:05 GMT

With our satellite dish at the ready, the sun shining and half a dozen Museum scientists raring to go, last weekend's Nature Live events went down a storm!

Linking back to the studio from the harbour in Lyme Regis, we brought the annual Fossil Festival to South Kensington. For visitors who were unable to visit the south coast in person, we revealed why Lyme Regis is THE place to go fossil hunting and showed our audiences some of the weird and wonderful specimens that can be found there.

Museum curator Zoe Hughes reveals an Ammonite, found in the local area.

Does this count as Big Pond dipping?

Sunday's events brought us up to date with the organisms that call our seashore home. I was out first thing trying my luck with my bucket and net. I think I was the oldest 'rock-pooler' on the beach! Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find very much, except for lots of seaweed ... but this proved to be far more interesting than I had first thought!

Museum scientist Lucy Robinson explained that there are many different species of seaweed to be found along our coastline, varying in colour, shape and size. She also explained the various ways seaweeds and their extracts can be used - in toothpaste, ice-cream, fertilizer and cosmetics (to name but a few).

And of course, some types of seaweed can be eaten - such as sea lettuce. Lucy and I decided to give it a go ... our conclusion, it's very salty and a bit crunchy (but I think that may have been sand!) To find out more about seaweed and how to identify them, visit our Big Seaweed Search pages.

Yum!

Lyme Regis is a great place to visit at any time of the year. If you're interested in fossil hunting, look out for the many guided walks that are on offer throughout the year, giving you the opportunity to explore the beaches with a local palaeontologist who knows what to look out for and who can tell you more about the fossils that are found there.

And if you'd like to experience the Fossil Festival for yourselves, put this date in your diaries: Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 May 2014. If this year is anything to go by, it will be another great weekend!

An EGGcellent event

Charlotte - Nature Live host — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:31:52 GMT

Phew, it's been a busy few weeks at the Museum! With snow outside and schools on holiday, everyone was keen to visit the Museum and to mark the Easter holidays we decided to programme some suitably festive Nature Live events ... my favourite being Eggs-tinct! If you weren't able to see it in person, here are a few highlights:

No egg event at the Museum is complete without reference to dinosaurs and Museum curator Lorna Steel brought along this beauty! A REAL dinosaur egg!

Equally, no egg event would be complete without the largest egg in the world ...

No, this isn't some clever perspective, camera trickery - this really is the size of the largest kind of egg in the world (with Lorna's average sized hand above). This one belongs to an extinct Elephant Bird, a species that once lived in Madagascar. These birds were huge - at 3 m tall they were far larger than today's Ostriches - and consequently laid very, very big eggs. EGGs-traordinary!

The Best of British Dinosaurs!

Charlotte - Nature Live host — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:22:15 GMT

Who doesn't love a good dinosaur event?! Triceratops, T-Rex, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus....the list goes on. But have you ever heard of Scelidosaurus, the topic of our event last Sunday??

I certainly hadn't until I met Palaeontology Curator Tim Ewin. Scelidosaurus was the first whole dinosaur ever to be discovered (before that, only parts of dinosaurs had been found, and no-one had discovered any skulls)....and what's more, it was found right here in England, along the coast at Lyme Regis.

Scelidosaurus wasn't a massive dinosaur, diplodocus and the like were all ALOT bigger, but it had some fantastic armour plating which may have helped protect it from predators but also may have acted as a form of display, to deter opponents or attract a mate.

But what's so special about the Scelidosaur remains in Lyme Regis (which are continually being discovered as the cliffs slowly erode) is their quality. The fossils have been brilliantly preserved and scientists are able to study the bodies of these animals in great detail, including their skin which remarkably has also been fossilised.

So next time you're talking about your favourite dinosaur, spare a thought for the often (and wrongly) forgotten Scelidosaurus. The first whole dinosaur ever to be discovered, found right here on our fair isle and with fossilised skin too - you don't get much better than that!

Scelidosaurus is the dinosaur at the bottom of the picture. Megalosaurus is at the top.

Dinosaur diversity

Charlotte - Nature Live host — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:09:38 GMT

Last Thursday museum scientist Paul Barrett (the man when it comes to dinosaurs) took part in a Nature Live event on Dinosaur Diversity. We covered everything from the latest news about ginger dinosaurs to how we know what noise dinosaurs made. We also talked about Oxford Street!! More commonly associated with massive department stores and high street fashion, Oxford Street is currently home to some impressive animatronic dinosaurs!

As you can see from the photo below, Paul brought a few things from the museum collections with him. Notice the large lower jaw on the left of the photo (next to Paul) - a cast from a T-rex specimen. And, of course, there was the poo....dinosaur poo (hiding in the white box on top of the table and referred to as coprolites). Believe it or not, it is possible to find fossilised dinosaur poo - it's pretty hard, and no longer smells (!), but it can still help scientists to understand more about these remarkable animals.

Brilliant stuff!