Alistair Hardaker | Images: Fisher Studios and Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford
University of Oxford museum completes its eight-year ‘Life, as we know it’ project, with new dinosaur displays opening on 20 July.
The Museum of Natural History at the University of Oxford has today completed a redisplay project involving more than 3,000 objects, which it describes as the largest in its 165-year history.
The new displays, which include three Oxfordshire dinosaurs, open on 20 July and mark the final phase of Life, as we know it, an eight-year programme to change how the museum’s collections are presented. Supported by Biffa Award, the project has installed 48 new displays in 24 showcases themed around biodiversity, ecosystems, evolution and earth.
Dr Gavin Svenson, director of the Museum of Natural History, said the new displays “bring together thousands of specimens to tell some of the most important stories in science, from the history of life on Earth to the extraordinary diversity of the natural world today”.
At the centre of the final phase is Megalosaurus, a Jurassic dinosaur discovered in a quarry in Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, in the late 18th century. It became the first dinosaur to be scientifically named when University of Oxford Professor William Buckland presented its remains to the Geological Society of London in 1824.
Alongside it is a related genus, Eustreptospondylus, a predatory dinosaur discovered in Oxford in 1870. It is exhibited for the first time as a fully articulated skeleton, using a combination of original fossil material, digital modelling and 3D printing, created with the University of Chicago.
A third Oxfordshire dinosaur, Cumnoria, named after its discovery in Cumnor in 1879, is displayed in a showcase on fossilisation.
The displays also draw on Oxfordshire’s Jurassic fossil record. Around 166 million years ago, dinosaurs crossed a muddy plain leaving behind fragments of skeletons and footprints. A “dinosaur highway” excavated at a farm in Ardley, Oxfordshire, in 2024 by museum experts revealed several dinosaur footprints, including the three-toed prints of Megalosaurus. A 60-metre sequence of Megalosaurus footprints cast from fossilised prints can be seen crossing the lawn in front of the museum.
The final phase also includes tactile mineral specimens and a new installation, Mirror Moon, by artist Luke Jerram. The one-metre diameter polished steel sculpture presents a reconstruction of the Moon’s surface using topographic data from NASA. A digital interactive, Prehistoric Diver, recreates ocean ecosystems from the Jurassic and Cambrian periods.
Last year, the muuseum counted than 877,000 visits. Professor Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: “The completion of ‘Life, as we know it’ is a remarkable achievement that brings together cutting-edge science, outstanding collections and public engagement, helping new generations of visitors explore the history of our planet and the extraordinary diversity of life upon it.”
