What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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These are the fossilised remains of two sea-living animals, both of which are now extinct. Their bullet-like shapes are similar and were good designs for fast swimming. Both were cephalopod molluscs (related to octopuses, squid and cuttlefish), but they were not the same type. They evolved similar shapes independently, but possible for similar reasons.
The larger fossil shell pictured is a member of a group of animals called the Nautiloidea. It is fossilised in a fine-grained sediment, out of which it has been partly chiselled and polished. You can see some of the shell’s inside on the top: the stripes represent different chambers in which the animal lived as it grew.
You may have seen the shell of a Nautilus shellfish, with its classic flat spiral shape. While this form has suited Nautilus for the last 230 million years, and helps maintain buoyancy stability in the water, other nautiloids lost their coils altogether.
Nautiloids were not the only cephalopods to evolve straightened shells. Some ammonite species also had loosely coiled or straight shells. The reasons why they evolved to have more straight shells are not clear: the shape may have allowed the animals to propel themselves faster through the water than coiled shells would have, and this might have helped them evade predators. The second fossil you see is the rostrum (hard part) of a belemnite. While the nautiloid would have lived within its shell, the belemnite rostrum would have been located inside this animal’s mantle (soft body), near its rear end. Squid and cuttlefish are other cephalopods that have internal hard parts. The belemnite’s body would have extended towards its head a substantial distance beyond the wide end of this fossil rostrum, and the entire animal may have been 4-5 times the rostrum’s length – larger than the nautiloid. Both belemnites and nautiloids had heads with two eyes and several tentacles, as do cephalopods living today.
Key Stage 1 – Making a fossil cast
Key Stage 2 – How are fossils formed?
Key Stage 3/4 – Fossil types, evolution, and extinction
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery EYFS workshop: Tracks and trails.
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery Key Stage 1 workshop Fossils and Mary Anning.
Sensing the Past was a collaborative, coproduced project with Dorset Museum & Art Gallery and Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre with members of the Dorset Blind Association funded by Wessex Museums Partnership. Visually impaired people often feel very isolated and were particularly impacted during lockdown.
The project has run over two phases and incorporated two outreach sessions and three online talks, one during lockdown. The group enjoyed a sensory tour of the Natural Dorset Gallery and fossil cast working at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery and a visit to the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre for a fossil finding and sensory touch session with larger fossils and local specimens in October and November 2023. The participants visited Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in April 2023 and created a group sculpture with their fossil casts. Audio recording were created to capture the group’s experiences, this formed part of a small display with the final sculpture in Dorset Museum and at Charmouth.
The nautiloid was chosen by Adam Millward from the Dorset Blind Association. Adam said, “I particularly like how smooth it is as other fossils generally have a lot of ridges and textures, these are so different as they are so smooth to touch. You can imagine what the creature might have looked like and handling this object gives you an idea of the different scale of some of these creatures and how large and small they were. I also like the contrast of the stripes and patterns on the nautiloid. I enjoyed the visit to our group in Poole as it is great to handle the various fossils and see a visual representation of what they would have looked like. I also enjoyed working with the clay and plaster as you were able to create your own literal and physical fossil.”
Adam continued to work on another version he created at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery and has painted the plaster casts with various colours after researching and finding other images of ammonites. Adam studied photography at Solent University, Southampton and undertook some photography work for another projects, Awakened by Frink with the Dorset Deaf Activities Group.
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!