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 p ...

, Purbeck,

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. 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. From an early age on, Etches began to find, collect and restore the fossils he found on the Jurassic Coast. His collec ...

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

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic 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 inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-December ...

, an SSI and

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

, 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 Kimmeridge Ledges () is a set of Kimmeridge clay ledges stretching out in to the sea on the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula on the English Channel coast in Dorset, England.They are located to the southeast of Kimmeridge Bay and south of the villag ...

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

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

ammonite Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) ...

eggs and fossils from the Upper Jurassic

Kimmeridge Clay Formation The Kimmeridge Clay is a 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 is the major source rock for North ...

including ''Thalassodraco etchesi gen. et sp. nov.''.

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 Collections of museums in the United Kingdom Isle of Purbeck Jurassic Coast

Building

Collection

See also

References

External links