Discoveries of ammonites are commonplace, although the remains of
more substantial land and marine reptiles do turn up occasionally.
However, if you want to confront the dinosaurs more personally, visit
the
Rotunda Museum,
the home of ‘Scarborough’s Lost Dinosaurs’. The exhibition comprises
fossilised evidence of dinosaurs, which roamed around the neighbourhood
during the Jurassic period.
The Yorkshire coast has an intriguing history, between 1700 and 1850 many of the picturesque fishing villages like Staithes and Robin Hood’s Bay were notorious as smuggling ports. Captain Cook, the British navigator and explorer, began his seafaring career at Whitby, and Whitby Abbey provided the setting for Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. During the Civil War, Scarborough Castle
endured two sieges, and in the opening months of World War I, German
battleships shelled the town and castle from the bay. And the Romans
were the first to recognise the importance of Filey – long before Billy Butlin!
