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Big Freeze - The Ice Age Cometh To Yorkshire Museum
By Safira Ali
17/06/2005
Image: Shows a photograph of the jagged layers of ice of the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina.
Brrrrr... the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, Argentina. © Bernhard Edmaier.
Safira Ali grabbed her snowsuit, strapped on a pair of goggles and skiied to York to see what the Ice Age is all about.
The Ice Age exhibition is now showing at Yorkshire Museum, York, until December 31 2005.
It’s a hands-on experience and allows children and families to take part in the fun, combining facts and displays with evidence of animals and plants from thousands of years ago.
“York Museums Trust has created a marvellous series of workshops for schools,” said Janet Barnes, chief executive of York Museums Trust. “There are activities within the exhibition. There are different levels of learning and fun. The general family can use the space.”
A piece of glacier, showing the layers of sediment picked up along the way. Published courtesy of Richard Waller, Keele University.
On entering the exhibition the audience is greeted with a domestic living room, with a television showing a weather forecast. Paul Hudson, weatherman for BBC Look North made an Ice Age forecast especially for the exhibition.
Once inside the museum there is a six-metre high mountain of refrigeration, which is made up of 50 fridges, fridge freezers, ovens and mini-fridges.
Each one displays information and allows people to open the doors and find fun Ice Age facts inside.
Image: Shows a photograph of a hyena jaw.
A hyena jaw, dating back about 125,000 years, found in Kirkdale Cave, North Yorkshire.
Leading away from the fridge mountain, is a cave in the form of a landscape made from boulders and ice.
Six DVDs and 36 speakers throughout the exhibition play a soundtrack made especially for the event by musician Craig Vear.
There are real fossils and miniature versions of mammoths and boulders, which were scratched by ice while they were moved by ice during this period. A dark cave displays remains of hyena victims, including bones and teeth found in Kirkdale Cave, near Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire.
Image: Shows a photograph of a small piece of bison bone with teeth marks from a hyena.
A bone from an ancient bison found in Kirkdale Cave, North Yorkshire complete with hyena teeth marks.
Although it is commonly thought that the Ice Age was completely cold, the exhibition shows this is untrue in yet another gallery, which displays the warmer periods of the ice age when hippos, rhinos, lions and elephants roamed Britain.
During these warmer climates the temperature was surprisingly only a couple of degrees warmer than it is today.
Visitors can have a taster of what cold winters in 1947 and 1963, the coldest periods in Britain in recent memory, were like by seeing a series of photos and stories told by people who were in Yorkshire at the time.
Frozen milk bottles in the cold winter of 1963. Photograph taken in Berkshire by Peter and Marian Down.
These are displayed in an authentic living room from the period with a television displaying these images in a documentary style programme.
But that is not all. Children can get interactive in the Ice Lab, a practical room with various artefacts designed for children to learn more. As well as DVDs playing, there’s hands-on experience, microscopes to look through and a scientist’s white lab coat to try on.
Whatever your taste, there is something for everyone at this exhibition, which is more than just a learning experience.
Yorkshire Museum & Gardens, York
Museum Gardens, York, YO1 7FR, North Yorkshire, England
Open: Daily 1000-1700
Closed: Closed 25/26 December, 1 January
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