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

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.



 
Sedgwick Museum Collections Store - artists impression

Find out more

Support this project

If you would like to discuss how you might contribute to the Sedgwick Museum Collections Store, please contact Professor Simon Redfern, Head of Department.

To make a donation to the Sedgwick Museum Collections Store please visit our online giving page.

UK tax payers can use Gift Aid to make a donation worth more. For every pound you give, the department get an extra 25 pence from HM Revenue and Customs, at no extra cost to yourself, this is of enormous benefit.


Earth Stories - The latest geological news Collections Up Close
 

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

Saturday
10:00 to 16:00 

Sunday
Closed





Volunteering for all

Elliott Cowie has chatted to Museum Administrator Sarah Hammond about his love of fossils and how his diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder plays a part in his day while volunteering at the Museum.
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Bringing fossils to life: New palaeoart at the Sedgwick Museum

Exhibitions Coordinator Rob Theodore, talks to model maker and student Emily Manning about her experience working with the Museum on her latest model, the Jurassic plesiosaur Cryptoclidus eurymerus.
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The view from my window - Forbes Building update

Sarah Wallace-Johnson, the Museum’s Conservator, updates us on progress with the Forbes Building at West Cambridge.
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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


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