About

Portland Museum houses a fascinating collection of Jurassic fossils that attracts visitors from all over the world.

Come and see the amazing Megalosaurus footprint embedded in a rock at the top of the garden. Or the collection of cycads that first brought the groundbreaking scientist, Marie Stopes, to the island. Amongst the highlights inside the museum is the Portland turtle fossil. This extremely rare fossil is the oldest known example of a turtle fossil found in Europe and possibly the world.

Inside the museum and out, there are a great number of enormous ammonites: the remains of reptiles that swam in tropical Jurassic seas. Like the cycads, many of the ammonites were discovered over the years by working quarrymen and it’s in the layers of Portland Stone, used to construct the most iconic buildings in the world, that you can see Portland’s Jurassic history embedded.