We've packed the car and we're ready to go to this year's Fossil Festival! The Museum will be in its usual place in the main marquee on the beach near the Lyme Regis Museum - this is my first trip to Lyme so it's all new to me.
I'm looking forward to the tropical climate and warm, shallow sea...oh no, that was in the Jurassic period. Forecast for this weekend: cool with occasional showers and the possibility of overnight frosts. Ah well, we're in a tent!
Museum volunteers Sam McCausland and Mike Smith pack the important stuff into the Fossilmobile.
This year we will be bringing anthropologist Margaret Clegg to talk about ancient humans, and palaeontologists Pip Brewer and Jerry Hooker to showcase some very ancient mammals.
You can sieve for sharks teeth with fish curator Emma Bernard and expert David Ward, and if you can find them you can take them home with you! They will also show you how to use shark jaws and teeth to estimate the body size of some of the largest sharks ever to have lived.
Zoe Hughes, our cephalopod and brachiopod curator and I will be explaining how palaeontologists reconstruct fossils to work out how the animals looked when they were alive. Test your palaeo-skills with our drawing challenge! Palaeontologists Martin Munt and Noel Morris are Lyme veterans and will be on hand to answer all your most technical paleontological questions - so you'd better think of some!
Those mysterious Museum mineralogists are planning a sparkling surprise so come down to the beach and see some very special pebbles...
