Jurassic - 150 million years ago

The land that came to be Peterborough started forming during the time of dinosaurs, 150 million years ago, at the bottom of a sub-tropical sea. The sand, mud and seashells, deposited on the sea bed in Jurassic times has become the clay taken from the brick pits and the limestone used to build churches, houses and walls.

 

Those warm sea waters were full of life; strange creatures such as ammonites and huge marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. When they died, their skeletons were sometimes preserved, buried deep in the mud at the bottom of the sea. This process continued for 100 million years until enormous earth movements squeezed up the old ocean floor above the surface of the sea.

 

In the last two million years the story moves on. Ice Ages affected the character of the Peterborough landscape, as the vast ice sheets formed and melted. The rock surfaces were scraped and rolled, rivers flowed rapidly, depositing sand and gravel in the Nene and Welland valleys and out into the fens.

 

These gravel and sand deposits are quarried today for building materials. The remains of animals that lived in the cold periods, and warmer periods in between, are often found in these quarries. Peterborough Museum houses the skeleton of the 117,000 year old "Deeping elephant" several skulls of woolly rhinoceros and the "Whittlesey ox". The Geology Gallery has the best display of Jurassic marine reptiles in Britain, outside of London.