The Ridgeway is a ridgeway or ancient trackway described as Britain's oldest road. The section clearly identified as an ancient trackway extends from Wiltshire along the chalk ridge of the Berkshire Downs to the River Thames at the Goring Gap, part of the Icknield Way which ran, not always on the ridge, from Salisbury Plain to East Anglia. The route was adapted and extended as a National Trail, created in 1972. The Ridgeway National Trail follows the ancient Ridgeway from Overton Hill, near Avebury, to Streatley, then follows footpaths and parts of the ancient Icknield Way through the Chiltern Hills to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. The National Trail is 87 miles (140 km) long.
Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. At 39.3 metres (129 ft) high, the hill is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; it is similar in volume to contemporary Egyptian pyramids. The site is in the care of English Heritage.
The La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark.
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.
Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in south-west England. One of the best-known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 4th Baronet,, known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet, from 1865 until 1900, was an English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath. Lubbock worked in his family company as a banker but made significant contributions in archaeology, ethnography, and several branches of biology. He coined the terms "Paleolithic" and "Neolithic" to denote the Old and New Stone Ages, respectively. He helped establish archaeology as a scientific discipline, and was influential in debates concerning evolutionary theory. He introduced the first law for the protection of the UK's archaeological and architectural heritage. He promoted the establishment of public libraries and was also a founding member of the X Club.
The barber surgeon of Avebury is a skeleton discovered in 1938 at Avebury henge monument in Wiltshire, England.
The Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium is a Brussels museum dedicated to natural history. It is a part of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.
Alexander Keiller was a Scottish archaeologist, pioneering aerial photographer, businessman and philanthropist. He worked on an extensive prehistoric site at Avebury in Wiltshire, England, and helped ensure its preservation.
Charles Byrne, or "The Irish Giant", was a man regarded as a curiosity or freak in London in the 1780s for his large stature. Byrne's exact height is of some conjecture. Some accounts refer to him as being 8 ft 2 in (2.49 m) to 8 ft 4 in (2.54 m) tall, but skeletal evidence places him at just over 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m).
Maud Edith Cunnington was a Welsh archaeologist, best known for her pioneering work on some of the most important prehistoric sites of Salisbury Plain.
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in Wiltshire, England. The WHS covers two large areas of land separated by about 24 kilometres (15 mi), rather than a specific monument or building. The sites were inscribed as co-listings in 1986. Some large and well known monuments within the WHS are listed below, but the area also has an exceptionally high density of small-scale archaeological sites, particularly from the prehistoric period. More than 700 individual archaeological features have been identified. There are 160 separate scheduled monuments, covering 415 items or features.
AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh, is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle, by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) is a natural history museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. The museum is the oldest in the state, and the largest natural history museum in the Southeastern United States.
The Lovers of Valdaro, or Valdaro Lovers, are a pair of human skeletons dated as approximately 6,000 years old. They were discovered by archaeologists at a Neolithic tomb in San Giorgio near Mantua, Italy, in 2007. The two individuals were buried face to face with their arms around each other, in a position reminiscent of a "lovers' embrace".
Tyrannosaurus is one of the most iconic dinosaurs and is known from numerous specimens, some of which have individually acquired notability due to their scientific significance and media coverage.
Rollo Maughfling is the Archdruid of Stonehenge and Britain. He is a long-time campaigner for the restoration of traditional rights of access to druidic sites, and respect for ancient druidic rituals. He is also a founder member of the Council of British Druid Orders.
The Whanganui Regional Museum in Whanganui, New Zealand, has an extensive collection of natural and human-history objects. The emphasis is on items from the Manawatu-Wanganui region, but the collection also includes objects of national and international significance, such as Pacific tapa, ceramics from Asia and Cyprus, and moa bones from nearby Makirikiri Swamp.
The London cast of Dippy is a plaster cast replica of the fossilised bones of a Diplodocus carnegii skeleton, the original of which – also known as Dippy – is on display at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The 26-metre (85 ft) long cast was displayed between 1905 and 2017 in the Natural History Museum in London, becoming an iconic representation of the museum. It began a national tour of British museums in February 2018. Dippy returned to London in June 2022, and then moved to Coventry as a long-term loan to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in 2023.
Dippy is a composite Diplodocus skeleton in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the holotype of the species Diplodocus carnegii. It is considered the most famous single dinosaur skeleton in the world, due to the numerous plaster casts donated by Andrew Carnegie to several major museums around the world at the beginning of the 20th century.
