The Jurassic

When: 206 to 144 million years ago.

Animals: Reptiles dominate land, sea and air. Dinosaurs - like the Oxford forms Eustreptospondylus and Cetiosaurus - are common; pterosaurs fly in the skies above; ichthyosaurs and other marine reptiles swim in the oceans. Echinoderms (sea lilies and star fish) and molluscs - like ammonites and belemnites - are common invertebrates in the oceans.

Plants: Forests of conifers (trees like pine trees) grew on the land.

Firsts: Flowers may have bloomed for the first time. Bony fish similar to most of those we see today, swim in the oceans, and Archaeopteryx and the first true birds appear.

Lasts: Most groups lived through the Jurassic into the Cretaceous.

Notes: Mammals were small and were insignificant compared with the dominant reptiles.

Fossilised Proteroctopus preserved in stone

This is the fossil of a octopus-like animal called Proteroctopus. It was found in France and is about 164 million years old. The first real octopus appeared later, in the Cretaceous period.
A fossil like this one, where you can see soft parts of the animal (like the tentacles) are quite rare. Usually it is only the hard parts of an animal, like bones and teeth, that are fossilised.

Do you know what these fossils are?

This is a fossil ammonite - an extinct mollusc that floated through the seas in its coiled shell. It was found in rocks formed at the beginning of the Jurassic period in Lyme Regis in Dorset. Lyme Regis is well known for its Jurassic fossils - many ammonites, belemnites and marine reptiles have been found there.

This is a fossil belemnite - an extinct squid like animal with a bullet-shaped skeleton called a rostrum that you see here. It was found in rocks formed at the beginning of the Jurassic period in Lyme Regis in Dorset. Lyme Regis is well known for its Jurassic fossils - many ammonites, belemnites and marine reptiles have been found there.

This is the leaf of a fossil cycad, a primitive plant that looks like a small palm. It was found in Yorkshire and is over 170 million years old.

Cycads survive today in parts of the upper and lower tropics, specifically in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and the American Tropics and Subtropics. They are sometimes called 'living fossils'.

This is the fossil of a fish that looks quite like the ones you would see swimming in the oceans today. It was found at a famous fossil site called Solnhofen in Germany and is about 150 million years old.

These are fossil corals (the one on the right has been cut through so you can see its insides). They were found in Oxford and are over 150 million years old. At that time Oxford was covered in a warm tropical sea.

The specimen you clicked on was the fossilised footprint of the meat-eating dinosaur Megalosaurus pictured on the right. These footprints were found in a quarry at Ardley near Oxford and are probably about 168 million years old.

Why not visit the Museum and see the trackway of Megalosaurus footprints that run across our front lawn?

The specimen you clicked on was the fossilised skeleton of an ichythosaur similar to the one pictured on the right. It was a marine reptile that swam in the seas early in the Jurassic period.

If you look closely at the fossil you can see fish scales near its stomach - this is what the ichthyosaur had eaten before it died and became fossilised. It was found in Lyme Regis in Dorset.

The specimen you clicked on was the fossil of an animal called Archaeopteryx, pictured on the right. It was found at a famous fossil site called Solnhofen in Germany, which is about 150 million years old.

It is a very important fossil, because it shows the link between dinosaurs and birds (birds evolved from dinosaurs). It has some bird-like features, like feathers, and some reptilian features - it still has teeth, and has claws at the end of its wings

The specimens you clicked on were the fossilised leg bones of the plant-eating dinosaur Cetiosaurus. Cetiosaurus probably looked like the large dinosaur Diplodocus and was probably about 25 metres long from nose to tail. The bones were found near Chipping Norton and are probably about 168 million years old.

Why not visit the Museum and see the displays of Oxfordshire dinosaurs for yourself?

The specimen you clicked on was the fossil of a pterosaur like the one pictured on the right. Pterosaurs were reptiles that flew in the skies during the period that dinosaurs roamed the land. This fossil was found at a famous site called Solnhofen in Germany and is about 150 million years old.

Why not visit the Museum and see our new displays about pterosaurs and other fossil reptiles for yourself?

The Jurassic

Do you know what these fossils are?

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