• Museum entrance
  • Downing Street view of Museum
  • Museum steps
  • Tower
  • Museum gallery

Travel through time…

The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is the oldest of the University of Cambridge museums, having been established in 1728 as the Woodwardian Museum. Since then the collection has grown from about 10,000 fossils, minerals and rocks, to at least 2 million. A walk through the museum will take you on a 4.5 billion year journey through time, from the meteoritic building blocks of planets, to the thousands of fossils of animals and plants that illustrate the evolution of life in the oceans, on land and in the air. Also a major teaching and research resource in the Department of Earth Sciences, the Sedgwick Museum collections are a national treasure.

School Bookings Visiting
 
NEW Volunteer roles!

Gallery Volunteer

Term time and summer holidays roles. Full role description and application details here

Earth Stories - The latest geological news Collections Up Close
 

Monday to Friday
10:00 to 13:00 & 14:00 to 17:00

Saturday
10:00 to 16:00 

Sunday
Closed

We are CLOSED on Good Friday but open Saturday and Monday as usual

 




Does the Sedgwick Museum have any radioactive gemstones?

This was the question we were asked by Kanta Kiyomoto a year 8 student at Cambridge International School. Kanta is studying various forms and sources of radiation for his Silver CREST award and wondered if we could help out with some radioactive gems.
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Lyme Regis Rocks

How do you reach an untapped audience 4 hours away? You join forces with colleagues in affiliated organisations and travel down to the seaside together to do some outreach!
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Science Festival 2017 at the Sedgwick

Explosive (Earth) activities @ the Sedgwick Museum took place on Saturday 18th March 2017...!
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Publications

'Tools of the Trade'
Available to purchase in the Sedgwick Museum shop

Tools of the Trade

Agostino Scilla's
'Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense'
English translation available to download.
Agostino Scilla download

Our Rocks are on the Move!
We are reuniting our important rock collections under one roof! Can you help support the building of our new Sedgwick Museum Collections store? Read more and donate here

Friends of the Sedgwick Museum prizewinners give us their thoughts on their time at the Museum in 2016
Click here to read

Work Experience at the Sedgwick - read about our latest student to visit us for two weeks and experience life in a Museum. 

Studying Earth Sciences at Cambridge University

Did you know?
The University of Cambridge is listed at the top of The Complete University's Guide 2016 for geology.

Discover more about studying Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge in this video featuring Museum Curator of Mineralogy and Petrology Professor Marian Holness and Sir David Attenborough