How to find this gallery
- in the Red Zone
- nearest entrance: Exhibition Road (step-free)
- Museum map PDF (1.8MB)
Useful links
Examine remarkable fossil evidence of long-ago events in the Last Impressions gallery.
From 200-million-year-old wave ripples on beach sand to a petrified tree stump, dinosaur footprints, and a giant ammonite, the past is imprinted on all of these gallery specimens.
Star specimens and exhibits
- sedimentary rock shaped by Earth's moving crust and shifting continents
- a calcareous deposit called the Sunday Stone that tells the story of the working lives and hardships of miners in the 1800s
- agate grown in the gas bubbles of molten lava
- lichens that live for 10,000 years
- and bamboo that grows a metre a day
Explore the Museum
Discover what you can see and do in our other galleries and find out how to get around with our Museum map.
Discover: fossils
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What on Earth?Snakestones: the myth, magic and science of ammonites
It was once widely believed that ammonites were coiled snakes turned magically to stone.
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Science newsTurtles have lived for 230 million years - but will they survive climate change?
Tracking the diversity of turtles could also give us clues as to how they might respond to increasing pressures in the future.
22 May 2020 -
NewsDinosaur diaries: Spinosaurus, sauropod necks and a new 'starry lizard'
Dinosaur experts share some of the latest science news and views from across the world of palaeontology.
8 May 2020 -
DinosaursBrontosaurus: reinstating a prehistoric icon
For over 100 years palaeontologists thought this dinosaur didn't exist.
Life recorded in fossils
Explore fossils from the Museum's collection in an online exhibition, a collaboration between the Museum and Google Arts & Culture.