Dinosaurs of China Exhibition at Lakeside Arts, Nottingham

As mentioned in my post about the Dinosaurs of China exhibition at Wollaton Hall there is a sister exhibition at the Angear Visitor Centre at Lakeside Arts on the University of Nottingham campus. Here you can find two dinosaur skeletons and a range of different fossils, including the Nottingham Ichthyosaur.

The first dinosaur above is the Alxasaurus, named in 1994 and dating back to the Early Cretaceous. They had large arms and clawed hands, which you can see in more detail below, that they may have used to break into anthills like anteaters, or used to forage for vegetation like pandas.

The other dinosaur at Lakeside Arts is the Dilophosaurus, a carnivore from the Early Jurassic that had a pair of crests along the top of its head. As the exhibit highlights, this dinosaur featured in Jurassic Park which shaped the way the public thought about it and gave what is probably a very wrong impression.

In that vein there is an interesting timeline about the evolution of drawings of dinosaurs through history, which has developed in concert with the continuing discoveries about how dinosaurs looked and lived, which is accompanied by many illustrations. (As an aside, I would love if the pictures accompanying the exhibitions were made available to buy as postcards.)

Other features on display are casts of fossils to show the kind of things paleontologists investigate. My favourites were the Protoctopus ribeti, one of the earliest known octopus from the Jurassic period,

and the Helicoprion of 290 million years ago.

In keeping with the overall theme of the exhibition by which birds are modern dinosaurs, there were some bird skeletons on display, including this ostrich and this penguin.

And finally there was the Nottingham Ichthyosaur, so named because it was only recently found in a store room at the University of Nottingham and which I thought was impressively detailed.

An excellent accompaniment to the display at Wollaton Hall, you can find more of my photos here.