The geological collection at World Museum Liverpool contains over 40,000 fossils as well as extensive rock and mineral collections. Each of these exhibits helps to shed some light on the origins, structure and history of the planet Earth.
Founded in 1858, only seven years after the museum's establishment, much of the original collection was destroyed during the Second World War. The post-war collections have expanded considerably, thanks in part to the acquisition of several significant museum and university collections.
The largest of these was the University of Liverpool's geological collection that includes some 6,600 fossil specimens. Also noteworthy are the collections of Kendal Museum, St Helens Museum, part of the geological collections of Sir Henry Wellcome, and those of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester.
The collection covers the following areas:
'Kolihapeltis', a Devonian
trilobite from Morocco
The fossil collections are extensive (40,000 specimens) and mainly consist of British material arranged stratigraphically. The marine Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and Lower Carboniferous are particularly well represented and there is also a large collection of Pleistocene and Holocene fossils. Unusual specimens include eggs of the dinosaur Hypselosaurus, an egg from the first discovered clutch of Oviraptor eggs, two eggs of the flightless Madagascan bird Aepyornis, and a complete skeleton of the extinct Irish Elk, Megaceros giganteus.
The pre-war palaeontology collections were almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. The departmental daybooks and other records were also destroyed; brief details of donations and purchases survive in the annual reports but the full extent of the loss may never be known. Today, however, the collections have been extensively rebuilt and now rank amongst the top ten in the UK.
Why not decorate your desktop with a dinosaur wallpaper or one of the other new designs inspired by the collections?
Actinolyte
The rock collections (c 7,500 specimens) contain about 60% British and 40% foreign material. These are arranged regionally, stratigraphically and according to rock classes. There is also a substantial thin section collection of 4,000 slides, most of which are cut from accompanying rocks in the rock collection.
Quartz
The mineral collections, around 20,000 specimens, have a strong overseas bias with only about 35% of British material; North of England minerals are particularly well represented in the latter group. The mineral collection is arranged according to the Hey mineral index. Unusual mineral specimens include arborescent gold from Hope's Nose, Devon and samples of rare meteorite types including Shergottites, Carbonaceous Chondrites and Howardites. There is also a collection of 750 cut gemstones.
A fine collection of agates and other polished stones was built up between 1870 and 1892 by Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, and was bequeathed by Lord Derby to the museum in 1893. It was once described as "the most beautiful collection of agates and allied materials ever made". 782 specimens are listed in the catalogue but only 112 of these survived the blitz.
You can learn more about minerals in the 'Gems of the North' display