The Yorkshire Museum of Natural History in Sheffield opened on Saturday, with the ribbon cut by palaeontologist and ichthyosaur expert Dean Lomax using a baryonychus claw. To add to the excitement of the day, Lomax was able to recognize that one of the objects on display was much more interesting and important than it first appeared. “He was very excited. he was like a kid in a candy store,” said James Hogg, the 23-year-old driving force behind the new museum. “As far as we know it is the earliest example of a vertebrate embryo found in Britain. Discovered by Dean on our opening day. “We just thought it might be a few vertebrae, but Dean recognized that the whole embryo was there, he was able to identify the skull, the teeth and the whole body, including the fin and the ribs and everything.” Hogg said it was definitely the oldest complete ichthyosaur embryo ever found in Britain. Found on the Yorkshire coast, north of Whitby. The new museum, in the former headquarters of an Edwardian steelworks, is small but has big ambitions. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Hogg said opening weekend exceeded expectations, with people lining the street to get inside. Once inside, visitors would have seen around 1,000 objects on display, including minerals and fossils found in the area – such as a tusk-toothed mammoth, a domesticated dog, a crocodile skull and the lower jaw of a 12-metre-long plesiosaur. The museum grew out of Hogg’s interest and passion for natural history, which he said had taken off in earnest over the past four years. While an economics student at the London School of Economics, he regularly hopped between the British Museum and the Natural History Museum to feed his fascination with all things archeology and palaeontology. “The libraries were always busy on campus, so I just preferred studying there.” There are museums in the north of England that have natural history collections but, until now, there was no northern museum dedicated to the subject. This was Hogg’s motivation for a museum in his town, as well as the desire for it to be a bona fide and useful research institution. “We have more workshop space than gallery space and we have ambitions to move into a bigger space,” he said. “It’s such an interesting subject. It’s such an exciting idea – to really understand life before human existence.” The opening of the museum was given a boost by TV naturalist Chris Packham, who tweeted his support, noting how cool it was that it was opened using a gravity claw.
