Dorking and District Museum

Size: 373 Specimens (incl. 282 fossils and minerals of Ashcombe collection)

Content:
A collection mostly of local chalk fossils from the (Lower Chalk) of the old Dorking Town Quarry and the Middle and ?Upper Chalk of the surrounding area (incl. Ranmore Common).

These include a number of particularly fine specimens - in particular 20-30 fossil fish (both bony fish and shark), reptile remains including pterodactyl wing bones, a large elasmosaur (plesiosaur) vertebra, and the top of a skull (cranium) of a chalk pliosaur Polyptychodon interruptus.

The latter, though fragmentary, is the probably the most complete specimen of a pliosaur ever found from the English chalk. It is also happens to be a figured specimen, illustrated as well as described by Sir Richard Owen in his Supplement to Fossil Reptilia of the Cretaceous Formation (1851-1864).

The chalk fossil collection also contains a good selection of invertebrate fossils incl. crustaceans, bivalves, starfish, sea urchins, sponges, brachiopods, and worms, as well as some fossil wood.

Other local fossil finds include the complete "tail-end" of an articulated backbone of a local Iguanodon atherfieldensis, a Wealden dinosaur which was found during the excavation of a well at Broomelle Farm near Capel in 1895.

A small collection of Pleistocene mammal fossils includes the molar teeth and bone fragments of mammoth, rhinoceras, horse, wild ox, plus antler of red deer and reindeer from gravels at Giles Green near Dorking, in the Mole Gap.

There are a small number of large mineral specimens (British and foreign) and one or two more recently collected local fossils and rocks.

Collectors:

George Cubitt (1st.Lord Ashcombe) - collected prior to 1860; Henry Cubitt (2nd.Lord Ashcombe)

 

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