Dr Douglas Palmer: Before Evolutionary theory and the Dinosaurs: Adam Sedgwick’s Geological Museum of the 1840s and what Queen Victoria thought of it all

Speaker: Dr Douglas Palmer

By the 1840s, Woodwardian Professor Adam Sedgwick’s collection of fossils had grown so large that the University allocated space in the new Cockerell Building for a Museum of Geology. So, what were the prize museum exhibits of the time before evolutionary theory and the ‘invention’ of the dinosaurs? And which specimens did Queen Victoria take an especial interest in when she visited the Museum with Prince Albert in 1847?

Dr Douglas Palmer is a Cambridge-based earth science writer and lecturer who works part-time for the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Most recently he has contributed to Timelines of Science, DK 2023, and Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps, T&H 2020.

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