If one were to choose a theme for an exhibition to enthuse young children, giant prehistoric creatures would be at the top of the list. Pliosaurs were made famous by the BBC’s 1999 series Walking with Dinosaurs; at the opening of the third episode the gigantic Liopleurodon emerges from the waves to snatch a six-metre-long dinosaur from the shore. While not dinosaurs themselves, pliosaurs were the biggest predators of the Jurassic period, and some of the best fossils of the group come from south-west England.
It is no surprise then that Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (BMag) has built an exhibition around one of these mighty predators. BMag’s geological specimens are a designated collection and contain many scientifically important fossils.
The most dramatic of these, the sole example of a new species called Pliosaurus Carpenteri in 2013, is an eight-metre-long super-predator of the Jurassic seas. A fast-swimming beast with a two-metre row of banana-sized teeth is bound to engage even children with the most flighty of attention spans.
I should reveal a personal interest in this exhibition: I am a palaeontologist with a particular interest in Jurassic marine vertebrates and I am friendly with several of the key players in this fossils story – Simon Carpenter, the namesake of the species who discovered the fossil from Westbury Clay Pit in Wiltshire in 1994; Roger Vaughn, the geological curator and conservator who undertook much of the preparation of this fossil and sadly died in 2015; and Isla Gladstone and Deborah Hutchinson, the geological curators at BMag who worked tirelessly with their team to get Pliosaurus Carpenteri on display.
With that in mind, reviewing this exhibition is fraught with difficulty – Pliosaurus! Face to Face With a Jurassic Beast is a fabulous show in many ways, but it is not my cup of tea. Does that matter? Not at all, I am by no means the target audience. For the expert palaeontologist there are two recent peer-reviewed papers concerning this remarkable specimen. For families with children aged between three and 11, Pliosaurus! is a tour de force. The gallery successfully encompasses so many interactive elements that it would be hard to know where to start in describing them were it not for the fact that a visitor’s first encounter with the beast is so up close and personal.
Impressive model
On entering the gallery, the sole visible exhibit is a life-size, fleshed-out reconstruction of Doris the pliosaurus (so named by public vote). I took my two daughters (aged four and six) and they were encouraged by the staff to duck under, poke, prod and explore this impressive model. A broken tooth, a sore lower jaw and a festering wound on its hind limb are all there to discover; its roving eye hunts for prey, perhaps the animated ichthyosaur (a prehistoric fish), which itself is hunting a shoal of belemnites (ancient squid-like creatures) on the darkened walls of this atmospheric room.
My little ones are already museum veterans, but never has one gallery held their attention for so long. They were impressed by the scale of the animal and spent a lot of time scampering about it, before they could be encouraged to move on to see the fossil it represents.
Around a partition wall, and in contrast to the minimalism of the preceding space, the rest of the exhibition is brightly lit and boldly colourful. Families are offered a passport that can be embossed with the outline of Doris as they use different skills to learn about the fossil.
The enormous fossil is mounted in the centre of the gallery on an acrylic armature, which unobtrusively gives shape to the partially preserved skeleton. Aside from the intrinsic fascination inspired by a prehistoric sea monster, there are numerous features of the type specimen of Pliosaurus Carpenteri that add interest.
A touchscreen animation allows visitors to explore what are known as palaeopathologies of the skull – two lab-coated cartoon characters ask viewers to spot the damage to the jaw and when you touch the right spot a comic book styled “Ouch!” appears along with an explanation.
Arthritis of the jaw led to its painful displacement and eventually an unhealed break, which finished Doris off. These ailments connect back to what sharp-eyed kids will have spotted on the model they first encountered.
Around the margins of the gallery are a host of displays, learning stations and push-button interactives, each with a different goal. By depressing a levered jaw, visitors can pit their strength against the bite force of great predators and learn where Doris fits in.
Children can dress as squid or fish, climb in through a cutout of Doris’s gaping jaws and push sound buttons inside as they are digested and, with a tremendous farting noise, pooped out next to some coprolite specimens. There is even a mocked-up fruit machine where you can “spin” and “hold” different parts of the animal to try different colour combinations (the message being that the colour of the reconstruction is speculative).
Engaging children
While I quickly tired of these learning games, the numerous children in the gallery were enthralled. Pre-schoolers were playing with pliosaur glove puppets while their older siblings were devouring the fun and accessible text panels.
Other natural history specimens are incorporated with varying success: modern skulls show the adaptation of tooth morphology in predatory aquatic vertebrates, but a “pliosaurus zoo” displaying animals that share other adaptations, such as a streamlined body or four flippers, feels a little contrived.
BMag invites visitors to “pay what you think”, giving you the freedom to enjoy the exhibition before deciding how much of an admission fee it deserves. This is a worthy experiment for a city museum and it will be interesting to know how its revenue compares with previous temporary exhibitions.
The multi-faceted approach to learning styles allows families to understand not only how this magnificent creature lived, but also how it died, how it was discovered and how we know what we do about prehistoric life. Perhaps most importantly, the exhibition subtly explains why collecting, studying and caring for fossils is a worthwhile societal endeavour.
It is not always easy for the public to understand why museums hold specimens and artefacts that are not on public display, so temporary exhibitions that engage young audiences with the value of such collections must surely create great advocates for collections care and research.
So will everyone who visits like this exhibition? Certainly not, but the traditionalist will find conventional didactic interpretation in other galleries of the same museum. Meanwhile, my children are still talking about what they learned when they met Doris.
Matt Williams is the curator at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
Main funders Bristol City Council; Arts Council England; Bristol Museums Development Trust; Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives; Palaeontological Association Engagement Grant; Curry Fund of the Geologists’ Association; Royal College of Pathologists
Exhibition design In-house
Pliosaurus model Tony Hitchcock
Fossil mounting Nigel Larkin; Stephen Umpleby
Private loans Simon Carpenter; Anthony Beeson; Rhiannon Anaya; William Smith
3D printing ThinkSee3D
Contractors In-house;
Beaufort Bespoke
Lighting In-house
Exhibition ends 7 January 2018
Admission Pay what you think
It is no surprise then that Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (BMag) has built an exhibition around one of these mighty predators. BMag’s geological specimens are a designated collection and contain many scientifically important fossils.
The most dramatic of these, the sole example of a new species called Pliosaurus Carpenteri in 2013, is an eight-metre-long super-predator of the Jurassic seas. A fast-swimming beast with a two-metre row of banana-sized teeth is bound to engage even children with the most flighty of attention spans.
I should reveal a personal interest in this exhibition: I am a palaeontologist with a particular interest in Jurassic marine vertebrates and I am friendly with several of the key players in this fossils story – Simon Carpenter, the namesake of the species who discovered the fossil from Westbury Clay Pit in Wiltshire in 1994; Roger Vaughn, the geological curator and conservator who undertook much of the preparation of this fossil and sadly died in 2015; and Isla Gladstone and Deborah Hutchinson, the geological curators at BMag who worked tirelessly with their team to get Pliosaurus Carpenteri on display.
With that in mind, reviewing this exhibition is fraught with difficulty – Pliosaurus! Face to Face With a Jurassic Beast is a fabulous show in many ways, but it is not my cup of tea. Does that matter? Not at all, I am by no means the target audience. For the expert palaeontologist there are two recent peer-reviewed papers concerning this remarkable specimen. For families with children aged between three and 11, Pliosaurus! is a tour de force. The gallery successfully encompasses so many interactive elements that it would be hard to know where to start in describing them were it not for the fact that a visitor’s first encounter with the beast is so up close and personal.
Impressive model
On entering the gallery, the sole visible exhibit is a life-size, fleshed-out reconstruction of Doris the pliosaurus (so named by public vote). I took my two daughters (aged four and six) and they were encouraged by the staff to duck under, poke, prod and explore this impressive model. A broken tooth, a sore lower jaw and a festering wound on its hind limb are all there to discover; its roving eye hunts for prey, perhaps the animated ichthyosaur (a prehistoric fish), which itself is hunting a shoal of belemnites (ancient squid-like creatures) on the darkened walls of this atmospheric room.
My little ones are already museum veterans, but never has one gallery held their attention for so long. They were impressed by the scale of the animal and spent a lot of time scampering about it, before they could be encouraged to move on to see the fossil it represents.
Around a partition wall, and in contrast to the minimalism of the preceding space, the rest of the exhibition is brightly lit and boldly colourful. Families are offered a passport that can be embossed with the outline of Doris as they use different skills to learn about the fossil.
The enormous fossil is mounted in the centre of the gallery on an acrylic armature, which unobtrusively gives shape to the partially preserved skeleton. Aside from the intrinsic fascination inspired by a prehistoric sea monster, there are numerous features of the type specimen of Pliosaurus Carpenteri that add interest.
A touchscreen animation allows visitors to explore what are known as palaeopathologies of the skull – two lab-coated cartoon characters ask viewers to spot the damage to the jaw and when you touch the right spot a comic book styled “Ouch!” appears along with an explanation.
Arthritis of the jaw led to its painful displacement and eventually an unhealed break, which finished Doris off. These ailments connect back to what sharp-eyed kids will have spotted on the model they first encountered.
Around the margins of the gallery are a host of displays, learning stations and push-button interactives, each with a different goal. By depressing a levered jaw, visitors can pit their strength against the bite force of great predators and learn where Doris fits in.
Children can dress as squid or fish, climb in through a cutout of Doris’s gaping jaws and push sound buttons inside as they are digested and, with a tremendous farting noise, pooped out next to some coprolite specimens. There is even a mocked-up fruit machine where you can “spin” and “hold” different parts of the animal to try different colour combinations (the message being that the colour of the reconstruction is speculative).
Engaging children
While I quickly tired of these learning games, the numerous children in the gallery were enthralled. Pre-schoolers were playing with pliosaur glove puppets while their older siblings were devouring the fun and accessible text panels.
Other natural history specimens are incorporated with varying success: modern skulls show the adaptation of tooth morphology in predatory aquatic vertebrates, but a “pliosaurus zoo” displaying animals that share other adaptations, such as a streamlined body or four flippers, feels a little contrived.
BMag invites visitors to “pay what you think”, giving you the freedom to enjoy the exhibition before deciding how much of an admission fee it deserves. This is a worthy experiment for a city museum and it will be interesting to know how its revenue compares with previous temporary exhibitions.
The multi-faceted approach to learning styles allows families to understand not only how this magnificent creature lived, but also how it died, how it was discovered and how we know what we do about prehistoric life. Perhaps most importantly, the exhibition subtly explains why collecting, studying and caring for fossils is a worthwhile societal endeavour.
It is not always easy for the public to understand why museums hold specimens and artefacts that are not on public display, so temporary exhibitions that engage young audiences with the value of such collections must surely create great advocates for collections care and research.
So will everyone who visits like this exhibition? Certainly not, but the traditionalist will find conventional didactic interpretation in other galleries of the same museum. Meanwhile, my children are still talking about what they learned when they met Doris.
Matt Williams is the curator at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
Project data
Cost £140,000Main funders Bristol City Council; Arts Council England; Bristol Museums Development Trust; Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives; Palaeontological Association Engagement Grant; Curry Fund of the Geologists’ Association; Royal College of Pathologists
Exhibition design In-house
Pliosaurus model Tony Hitchcock
Fossil mounting Nigel Larkin; Stephen Umpleby
Private loans Simon Carpenter; Anthony Beeson; Rhiannon Anaya; William Smith
3D printing ThinkSee3D
Contractors In-house;
Beaufort Bespoke
Lighting In-house
Exhibition ends 7 January 2018
Admission Pay what you think
