Trifter

FINGERPRINTS OF TIME. YORKSHIRE Museum and Gardens has a marvellous new interactive exhibition for the whole family to enjoy. Fingerprints of Time allows the visitor to discover the age of everything. It has everything from meteorites, through dinosaurs, rocks and fossils to the Romans, Vikings and today’s crime scenes and even the humble Kit Kat bar. The oldest object is the 4.5 billion-year-old Middlesbrough Meteorite and the most recent is this day’s newspaper. Every exhibit is imprinted with the date that it was made. Often it is easy for the visitor to spot this date, other times they may need special tools to crack this dating code. Fingerprints of Time helps the visitor to find out how old the exhibits are and what impact they have had on our understanding of life and of the world that we live in. They can test their knowledge, investigate the evidence and experiment with the processes, that the Fingerprints of Time has used to find the invisible dates that are locked within the exhibits. It is possible to see Yorkshire as a tropical shallow sea 200 million years ago or watch the animals that roam Jurassic Yorkshire.

There is the history of Eboracum with some remarkable Roman finds that range from sculptures, mosaics and jet jewellery to pottery and other everyday items. Visitors can see some of Europe’s finest Anglo-Saxon and Viking relics. These include the 8th Century York Helmet and an 18 feet long Viking river boat made from a dugout oak trunk. The Middleham Jewel, made of gold that has been finely engraved and set with a magnificent sapphire is a beautiful medieval objet d’art. The Age of Everything reveals how old all these objects are and access dates by design styles, growth rings, stratification, magnetism, atoms and other techniques. It is open from 10am to 5pm daily with the exceptions of Christmas Day, Boxing day and New Year’s Day and is fully accessible to wheelchair users. Gifts that have been inspired by 2000 years of history are available in the gift shop. The Yorkshire Museum has entrances on Museum Street and Marygate, near Lendal Bridge, the main crossing over the River Ouse between York Minster and York Station. More current information can be obtained from 01904 687687.