Alexandra Freeman

When the first fossil mammals were found (especially those of the bizarre South American mammals brought back by Darwin from the voyage of the Beagle) they caused a sensation in Victorian England, and people flocked to museums to see them. Then, once dinosaur fossils were found in America (which did a very good marketing job on them!), the mammals became relegated to the museum basements. Although Britain does have some very good dinosaur sites, almost every museum in the country has its own local mammal fossils from the ice ages and before.

Since Walking with Dinosaurs created so much interest in palaeontology, I hoped that Beasts would do the same, and give museum all over the country an opportunity to draw attention to their mammal collections. I wrote to all the museums in the country a year before the series was due, in order to give them plenty of notice of when the series was to be released and that it would feature mammals. Once we knew exactly which animals were going to be included, I wrote to them again, with a form which they could use to let us know what relevant fossils they had in their collections along with their admission information. I had a very good response, and entered all the data into a spreadsheet. This could then be incorporated into the website to allow people to find out what their local museum held, and also search for the nearest museum containing fossils from a particular animal. The first function is available on the Beasts website page here.

As well as simply providing the viewers with information about what collections museums held, I was keen to maximise the amount of publicity the series could produce for them (and the reverse could also be true!). Working with Susan Harvey and Geraldine Jeffers in publicity, I put together a package of posters, flyers and video footage from the ice age programme for each museum which had replied. We also tried to organise for one of the series' producers to give a talk at each of the museums in the country with an extensive collection of relevant fossils.