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Caption

  • Pieces of fossilised rhynchosaur assembled together within a metal frame on a purple backdrop.
  • Pieces of fossilised rhynchosaur assembled together within a metal frame on a black background.
  • Pieces of fossilised rhynchosaur assembled together within a metal frame on a black background.
  • Pieces of fossilised rhynchosaur assembled together within a metal frame on a black background.

Rhynchosaur

Middle Triassic Period

Fossil

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Description

Rhynchosaurs roamed Devon 250 million years ago. They were plant-eating reptiles, not dinosaurs. They lived in savannah-like environments and crawled about on all fours, using their sharp claws to dig for food.

This particular fossilised specimen was discovered in the River Otter, close to RAMM.

Visual description: Fragments of rhynchosaur skull assembled on a wire structure. The pieces come together to rebuild the skull in a sculptural way. Wire forms fill in areas of missing fossil.

RAMM Treasures Trail - Object 16 - Rhynchosaur

Finish the Treasures of the Museum Trail by learning about the last object, the fossilised rhynchosaur.

Treasures of the Museum: Rhynchosaur

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Transcript

Nicki McCaskie: My name's Nicki McCaskie and I'm the Marketing Officer here at RAMM.

One of the objects that I really like here at RAMM is the rhynchosaur. It's a fossilised lizard specimen from about 250 million years ago. It was discovered quite close to RAMM, so the River Otter, and so it's got this really great local connection.

You'd find the rhynchosaur in our Down to Earth gallery, which is our geology gallery here in the museum on the ground floor. It's sort of held together on this wire structure. It all comes together to build a skull of this very strange arrow-headed creature.

The rhynchosaur wasn't actually a dinosaur, but it was a lizard. It would've been about a metre, just over a metre long, and it would've crawled sort of on all fours, quite low to the ground, low-slung body, and it was a vegetarian. So, despite the sharp, pincer-like teeth, it would've eaten plants and roots and other vegetation.

The River Otter is somewhere that I love walking. It's a really beautiful part of the world. So it's fascinating for me to walk along there and imagine what it might have been like all those years ago, and then to think back to the fact that it would've at one point been a semi-desert environment. You'd have seen the rhynchosaurs scuttling around through the undergrowth.

It really allows you to sort of almost travel back in time and really picture what it might have been like back then.

Credits

Watch RAMM staff and volunteers tell us why they love each of the 16 objects, and hear the fascinating stories that make these items so special.

Additional Information

Dimensions
20 x 30 x 120 mm
Accession Number
60/1985/292/1

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