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New ‘Lost Creatures’ Competition Launched by the Yorkshire Museum

The Yorkshire Museum has launched a new competition inviting primary school children to create their very own unique ‘creature’.

‘Lost Creatures’ is a primary school competition that invites children to create their own animal using the Yorkshire Museum’s Extinct Gallery as inspiration, looking at some of the special features animals and birds have evolved to help them adapt to their habitats.

Emma Williams, assistant curator of science and archaeology (learning), said: “We want to unleash the imagination of school children with this fun natural science competition.

The Yorkshire Museum’s Extinct Gallery shows the huge diversity of life and includes fossils of creatures now extinct.

One of the ways new species have emerged is through natural selection, developing adaptations which promote survival.

We want children to take inspiration from this to design an imaginary new animal and tell us about the adaptations which would help it survive.

We are looking for creative designs that most demonstrate well-considered features for helping the creature to adapt to its surroundings.

This is also a great one for teachers as it links directly to the school syllabus topics; Animals and Humans and Living things and their Habitats.”

The winning entry will be created into a human sized puppet which will make its debut appearance at the Yorkshire Museum during October half term 2015.

The winner will also receive a model version of their design and a free Evolution workshop for their school whereby children can learn about the theory of evolution from an actor in the character of Charles Darwin.

To request an information pack with full details please email schoolcompetitions@ymt.co.uk.

Artwork must be received by email by Friday 19th June. Presentations will take place week commencing 6th July.

Click here to download the Lost Creatures Competition PDF