I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship’
- Lord Byron
When the eminent architect T G Jackson designed the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, he added a delightful flourish to the double stairway leading up to the entrance. A pair of brown bears guards one set of steps and a pair of bison the other.
The choice was apposite. In 1904 geologists found fossilised remains of both bears and bison in the gravels of Barrington, a village south east of Cambridge. Bears and bison were just some of the animals roaming northern Europe 120,000 years ago during an inter-glacial period.
The Sedgwick Museum takes its name from Adam Sedgwick, one of the founders of modern geology. It’s one of the world’s oldest geological museums and its collection comprises many millions of objects including spectacular ichthyosaurs found by the fossil collector Mary Anning. The fossils found in the Barrington Beds by a group of Cambridge geologists are on display in Bay 3. Among the exhibits are remains of hippo, red deer, hyena, bison and elephant – as well as bear and bison.
Read the full story
Image:The Sedgwick Museum bears
Credit: Sir Cam
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
___________________________________________