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
- a fossilised dinosaur vertebra
- and bamboo that grows a metre a day
Explore the galleries with the Museum map
Find out how to get around with the Museum map. There are four zones to discover.
Discover: fossils
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Science newsLargest ever millipede’s head revealed by 300-million-year-old fossils
Arthropleura's head reveals that millipedes and centipedes are closely related.
9 October 2024 -
Science newsBird extinctions have a greater impact than we think
Every species extinction is bad, but the impacts are worse when we consider the ecosystem functions that are also lost.
3 October 2024 -
NewsNew species of ancient thylacines are the oldest ever found
Fossils discovered in northern Australia mark the beginning of a 25-million-year-old family.
12 September 2024 -
Science newsPlant-eating dinosaurs evolved backup teeth to eat tough food
Some of Earth’s most successful herbivores may have had hundreds of thousands of teeth in their lifetime.
27 August 2024
Life recorded in fossils
Explore fossils from the Museum's collection in an online exhibition, a collaboration between the Museum and Google Arts & Culture.