A day at the museum

My friend G and I went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which was wonderful.  Unfortunately it was not permitted to take photos.  We had some lunch there and then went to see the Mary Anning exhibition - which was tiny. My main blip is a model of the ichthyosaur, whose fossilised head she discovered when she was 14. Next is a miniature of the statue of her which now stands in Lyme Regis, after a long campaign and crowdfunding effort to get one. Her skills and achievements as a fossil expert were largely overlooked in her lifetime, and the finds she made were often credited to the men she sold them to. Tracy Chevalier’s book Remarkable Creatures is good about her, I think. The second extra is a delightful and menacing creature hanging from the museum ceiling, a pliosaur, which is thought to have been the monster which killed Anning’s ichthyosaur - from an analysis of the tooth marks. 
We were lucky that two young women, who were palaeontologists, were working as volunteers at the exhibition, explaining everything and bringing the objects to life.