The Etches Collection (also known as the Museum of Jurassic Marine Life) is an independent fossil museum located in the village of

Kimmeridge Kimmeridge () is a small village and civil parish on the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula on the English Channel coast in Dorset, England. It is situated about south of Wareham and west of Swanage. In 2013 the estimated population of the civil ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

, England. It is based on the lifetime collection of

Steve Etches Steve Etches, MBE (born in 1949) is an English plumber, fossil collector and preparator in Kimmeridge, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. From an early age on, Etches began to find, collect and restore the fossils he found on the Jurassic Coast ...

, a fossil hunter for whom some of his finds have been named, from the local area on the

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast, also known as the Dorset and East Devon Coast, is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about , and was ins ...

, a

SSSI A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

and

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

, especially around

Kimmeridge Bay Kimmeridge Bay () is a bay on the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula on the English Channel coast in Dorset, England, close to and southeast of the village of Kimmeridge, on the Smedmore Estate. The area is renowned for its fossils, with The Etche ...

and the Kimmeridge Ledges.

Building

The museum building was opened in 2016 at a cost of £5 million to house a collection of over 2,000 fossil specimens so that they would remain accessible beyond the lifetime of Steve Etches.

Collection

Etches had been collecting for over 30 years prior to the museum opening, and in that time he amassed a collection of fossils of international scientific importance that form the basis of the collection. The collection includes examples of

ammonite Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...

eggs and fossils from the Upper Jurassic

Kimmeridge Clay Formation The Kimmeridge Clay is a sedimentary rock, sedimentary deposit of fossiliferous marine clay which is of Late Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous age and occurs in southern and eastern England and in the North Sea. This rock formation (geology), form ...

including '' Thalassodraco etchesi''.

References

External links

The Etches Collection website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Etches Collection 2016 establishments in England Museums established in 2016 Biographical museums in Dorset Geology museums in England Fossil museums in the United Kingdom Collections of museums in the United Kingdom Isle of Purbeck Jurassic Coast

Building

Collection

See also

References

External links