Lasting Impressions

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

Find out how to get around with the Museum map. There are four zones to discover.

Explore fossils from the Museum's collection in an online exhibition, a collaboration between the Museum and Google Arts & Culture.

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