Evolution Rocks! – Lyme Regis Fossil Festival is On

Evolution Rocks – the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival is on for May 22nd to May 24th 2009.  Some doubts had been raised about the festival taking place this year after it was cancelled in 2008.  However, funding has been secured and the organisers have been given the go ahead to run the event again this year, linking into the Darwin 200 celebrations, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

We reported on whether this event was going to happen or not last year, when the event was very much “in the balance” according to one official.

To read this story and learn more about the Fossil Festival: Update on the Fossil Festival.

Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England  is at the heart of the world heritage site known as the “Jurassic Coast” it is a popular and attractive tourist destination and is world famous for the Jurassic fossils that can be found along the shoreline and eroding out of the cliffs.

The Fossil Festival was begun around 2004 (we think), Everything Dinosaur staff have been involved since the project’s inception and have attended every single one so far, either as volunteers helping to stage the event or as exhibitors.  This year we are booked to go down south again, but probably as a bit of a “busman’s holiday” rather than to exhibit or hold a seminar.

Our reasoning behind this is very straight forward, what with all the new product development work, teaching, museum work and everything else some of the staff have not had a proper holiday for 2 years.

Glad to see the Festival is back on, and by visiting Lyme Regis we will be able to pay homage to Mary Anning by visiting her grave in the churchyard on the hill.  Mary Anning was a pioneering English fossil collector.  She was born in Lyme Regis in 1799 and she became famous for her ability to find fossils in and around the cliffs.  She discovered the first Plesiosaur in 1821 and the first Pterosaur fossils in England in 1828.  During her lifetime she did not get the recognition her work deserved, but scientists today owe a great deal to Mary.

Mary Anning’s Tombstone at Lyme Regis

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur stocks a range of replica ammonites, belemnites, marine reptile and pterosaur figures, models of animals that Mary Anning would have been familiar with: CollectA Prehistoric Life Models and Replicas.