The Dinosaur Museum, Dorchester

Description:

This award winning Dinosaur Museum is a treat, especially for children. The Museum combines life-sized Dinosaur reconstructions with fossils, skeletons and interactive displays to create an exciting hands- on experience. It's great fun for all ages. If Museums are your interest then this one in the centre of Dorchester is well worth a visit.

On entering the visitor immediately encounters a complete dinosaur skeleton of the famous meat-eating Megalosaurus, a Jurassic dinosaur, and the first to be named scientifically some 175 years ago by the Reverend William Buckland.

Dinosaurs ruled the land for some 150 million years, finally becoming extinct 65 million years ago. Our fascination with dinosaurs started in the 1820's when the first true discoveries of dinosaur bones were made in England. In 1841 Sir Richard Owen invented the word "dinosauria" - meaning terrible lizard - to describe this group of prehistoric monsters.

This interest in the history of dinosaurs is reflected in the Dinosaur Museum. Some of the dinosaur fossils can be handled.