Continental trace fossils and museum exhibits - Geological Curators ...

Figure 1. The display and storage cabinets that were installed in 2004.approximately 200 specimens in this teachingcollection, which are augmented by photographs andteaching notes. The teaching collection is housed inmodern, metal drawer cabinets situated in the mainPalaeontology teaching laboratory of SEAES (Figure1). It is used extensively for undergraduate and taughtpostgraduate courses within the school, and forevening classes, day schools and other projects withthe public.A recent example of external use of the collectionwas an art project carried out with Key Stage 3 pupilsof the Grange School, Runcorn. The pupils wereasked to paint and model a creature that could havemade the locally quarried Chirotherium tracks, andto paint and draw the Triassic landscape (Figure 2).Over the course of the project the pupils had to learnhow to use the evidence provided by the fossils andto use their imagination. Access to the specimens wasprovided by the loan of trace fossil material. The useof interactive classroom facilities then allowed theschool to dynamically link with university staff.Collections of trace fossils work particularly well asa basis for projects which engage the public, as itbecomes necessary for participants to interpret whatthey see, and allows them to express ideas and opinionswithin the constraints of the evidence provided by thefossils.-244-The research and reference collections comprise some1800 specimens. The collections are housed in mobiledrawer stacks in wooden drawers with fitted woodenlids. Published material is indexed with prefix MGSF.To date the Research Collection holds 131 type,figured and referred specimens. It includesCarboniferous specimens from the Pennines (Hardy1970a; Broadhurst et al. 1980; Eagar et al. 1985;Miller 1988; Pollard 1988; Anderson 1996; Manganoet al. 2002), Triassic specimens from Arran (Pollardand Lovell 1976; Pollard and Steel 1978), from Annan(Pollard 1985) and Cheshire. A significant part of theCheshire material is the unique diverse marginalmarine ichnofauna from the Tarporley Siltstones ofDaresbury (Ireland et al. 1978; Pollard 1981).Other collections relating to published work includetrace fossils from the Jurassic (Goldring et al. 1991),Cretaceous (Pollard et al. 1993) and Eocene (Siggerudet al. 2000). Specimens from unpublished thesesinclude examples from the Devonian of the MidlandValley of Scotland (Walker 1985), the Carboniferousof the North Pennines (Lees 1991), Westphalian ofLancashire (Hardy 1970b) and the Eocene of theSuez Rift, Egypt (Malpas 2003). The research andreference collections also include incompletelycharacterised trace fossils of Triassic age fromGruinard Bay, northwest Scotland, Arran, Annan,