Curating dinosaurs: an adventure 200 years in the making

When I first tell people I work for a geology museum, they immediately want to know the answer to that famous question… ‘do you have any dinosaurs?’

I can’t blame them, I asked myself the same thing when I took on my role in August 2023. Dinosaurs are the reason I’m here. These magnificent reptiles have kept me enthralled for over 20 years, as they have done with the world for ten times that period.

In answer, I can safely say that the Museum does hold dinosaur remains. Though these may be small pieces (the biggest being about the size of a bowling ball) we have genuine dinosaur bones, teeth, eggshells, and of course numerous replica skeletal mounts, with the most iconic being Roary, our resident Allosaurus.

Nevertheless, answering this question did take longer than I had initially expected. The Museum has been acquiring material since 1880, only 56 years after the naming of the first dinosaur. Thus, the records of specimens in our care consist of paper registers alongside those already uploaded to our collections management system. The digitised records were created by several volunteers or previous curators over many years, with persistent though seemingly insignificant differences in how these specimens were documented.

In palaeontology, as with modern zoology, animals are arranged within groups called taxonomies, starting broad and becoming more specific. Dinosauria, as it is currently understood, is an unranked clade (or group) about midway through when compiling a very basic classification for one of these organisms. So, if we take Roary as our example, he sits as shown below.

Eukaryota; Animalia; Chordata; Vertebrata; Reptilia; Dinosauria; Saurischia; Theropoda; Carnosauria; Allosauridae; Allosaurus; A. jimmadseni

Here, Eukaryota is the broadest group, while Allosaurus jimmadseni is the most specific (in this case, being the actual species). When logged onto our system, this information is extremely useful, as it means we can find any relevant specimen by searching these words. However, many of our dinosaur specimens were previously listed using very different terms, with some being ‘dinosaur’ or ‘dinosaur bone’ while others were ‘saurian’ or even just their genus or species name with no wider context. This meant that without already knowing every specimen in the Museum which fell into the category of Dinosauria, compiling a list took numerous searches for different criteria in various text fields. Eventually, I found all 40 of these specimens and set to work, updating the taxonomic information in a bid to ensure these specimens remain publicly accessible in an easily navigable system.

And that’s just one part of curating dinosaurs. My role also means I must care for these specimens, as with everything in our collections. We have to ensure specimens are either stored or displayed appropriately, meaning they are kept in correctly-sized containers made of acid-free materials. We also use temperature, humidity, and light monitoring equipment, from which I receive weekly reports, to make sure these variables stay within strict ranges. Another responsibility is collections access, and so I assist other researchers or members of the public in viewing or studying our specimens to learn more.

So, despite having only a very small dinosaur collection at the Museum, we do everything possible to ensure the public get to experience the wonder of the reptiles which captured my imagination long ago.