Drawn to Nature: Plesiosaurs

In a year where people have found increasing solace in, and drawn creative inspiration from, the natural world, we invite you to participate in and enjoy ‘Drawn to Nature: Plesiosaurs’.

2021 marks the 200th anniversary of the world’s first scientific description of a plesiosaur, a type of meat-eating reptile that lived in the sea during the time of the dinosaurs. Looking like a ‘snake threaded through the body of a turtle’, the first nearly complete plesiosaur skeleton discovered by Mary Anning seemed so bizarre it was initially dismissed as a fake.

Join Museum Collections Manager Dr Hilary Ketchum to find out what we know - and still don’t know - about these enigmatic fossil animals, before taking a chance to draw your own using the museum’s specimens as inspiration with Q+A’s in this online, interactive science and art workshop.

Make sure to have your art materials to hand!