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An Ichthyosaur’s Tale
I knew it was planned to select the biggest Ichthyosaur fossil in the museum collection for the new displays. But when I saw this fossil, the first thing I thought, was "are you kidding?!"
It was broken in 5 pieces of different sizes and the break edges were covered with a thick layer of old dark glue and old white plaster which had been used to fill missing areas. The surface of the fossil was not only extremely dirty; it was also almost completely over-painted with a horrible brown and grey paint. You couldn't see much of the original fossil. It looked dreadful!
I began by removing the old glue from the break edges with a scalpel. Then I cleaned the surface of the fossil with Smoke sponge (a gentle conservation product), but this didn't make any difference. So I began to remove the dirt with cotton wool swabs and water, which also removed the horrible brown paint from the surface of the fossil. I found that there is a lot of beautiful fossil surface underneath the over-paint. So I'm removing all the paint from the surface and the plaster filling and will retouch just the plaster fills. I will also stick the smaller pieces together again, so we will have just two big pieces to mount for the new display. Joining every piece would make the fossil too heavy; all together it weighs 91 kg.
