York Museums Trust Blog

The beautiful and rare Tansy beetle, which is only found within a 30km stretch of York, is to be introduced into the Museum Gardens next year – if all goes to plan! writes Isla Gladstone, curator of natural science.

The Tansy beetle

We’re really excited to be working with the Tansy Beetle Action Group (TBAG) to help protect and understand this iconic York species.

The Tansy beetle is a bright green, flightless leaf beetle. It’s named after the Tansy plant that it eats and lays its eggs on. It used to be more widespread across the UK, but is now only known along the banks of the River Ouse near York. The species is endangered worldwide.

TBAG work to protect the Tansy beetle and research what it needs to survive. One thing they have learned so far is that the beetles can’t find new clumps of Tansy if these are more than 200m away. If the Tansy clump a population of beetles lives on is destroyed or flooded and there isn’t another one close by the population can be wiped out.

The Tansy plant

To prepare for our beetle colony we have planted Tansy and other plants, including Water mint and Sneezewort, in three 2m² square beds.

We’re hoping to introduce the beetle next Spring. This will extend its range and give our visitors an opportunity to see and help protect it.

We’ll be working with volunteers to maintain and monitor the Tansy beds. If you would like to help, please contact Fiona Burton, our Volunteers Manager, at fiona.burton@ymt.org.uk

Our gardeners preparing the Tansy beds...

Our giant ichthyosaur – a marine reptile that swam in the seas above Yorkshire when the dinosaurs walked on land – is back in the Yorkshire Museum after being conserved and cleaned by specialist conservator Nigel Larkin.

It has been fascinating to see this eight-metre long creature come ”back to life”, as the pieces of its fossilised skeleton have been carefully placed back together like a giant jigsaw.

Nigel Larkin at work with our ichthyosaur

The ichthyosaur was found in an alum quarry on the North Yorkshire coast in the mid 1800s and is about 180 million years old.

This huge specimen was donated to the Yorkshire Museum in 1857. For many years it was displayed on a wall in one of our galleries, but 20 years ago it was taken down due to concerns about its condition, with only its head left out on display. In 2009 we were awarded a substantial grant from the PRISM fund, matched by York Museums Trust, so that the ichthyosaur could be conserved and redisplayed in our new ‘Extinct’ galleries.

A different view showing the length of the ichthyosaur

I started in my post here in late 2009 and one of my first jobs was to examine all the pieces before they went off for conservation. At the time it was really difficult to imagine how the specimen was going to look as it had been covered in conservation-grade tissue paper before being taken off display. There was also a lot of general dust and grime from its many years on the wall, and other materials including plaster from the original Victorian mount.

It has been fantastic to see Nigel, a paeleontological conservator, reuniting the head with the body, beneath our other two marine reptiles, a pliosaur and a plesiosaur, which have been bandaged up for the week to protect them from damage!

This is one of the biggest ichthyosaurs ever found in Britain and we’re very pleased and proud to have it back on display at the Yorkshire Museum. Come along and see it for yourself to appreciate the sheer scale of this extinct Yorkshire giant!

Find more information on our giant ichthyosaur and Extinct – A Way of Life on the Yorkshire Museum website.