• 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
 

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


 




In Memoriam Dr Lewis Moysey R.A.M.C., F.G.S. 1869-1918

On the 26th of February, 1918 the hospital ship HMHS Glenart Castle left Newport, South Wales, heading for Brest in France. On board were 63 nurses, medical orderlies and officers, along with its crew and 99 wounded patients. One of the medical officers on board was the 49 year-old Captain Lewis Moysey RAMC, a graduate of Caius College and very keen amateur geologist who donated a substantial collection of Carboniferous fossils to the Sedgwick Museum.
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Australian Google celebrates 111 birthday of the late Dorothy Hill

On Sunday September 9th Google’s banner headline in Australia (https://g.co/doodle/ytbdqa ) celebrated the 111th birthday of a palaeontologist – the late  Dorothy Hill (1907-1997).
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SCIENCE MADE VISIBLE: DRAWINGS, PRINTS, OBJECTS 2 JULY 2018 – 30 NOVEMBER 2018 THE ROYAL SOCIETY, 6-9 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE LONDON SW1Y 5AG

Historic fossils from Agostino Scilla’s collection within the Sedgwick Museum’s Woodwardian cabinets are currently on display in the Royal Society’s summer exhibition in London. Called ‘Science made Visible: Drawings, Prints, Objects’, the exhibit explores the questions of how and when science become visual; how drawings, diagrams and charts came to be used alongside words and objects; who made them and what made them scientific?

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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