Museum opens doors to Monsters: (watch our behind the scenes video of the exhibit set-up below) Step back in time 290 million years to when bizarre-looking animals dominated life on land and sea, and find out about the greatest extinction the world has ever seen. On show at the Queen Victoria Museum, Inveresk, from tomorrow, Permian Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs is a unique exhibition that brings the past back to life with fossilized skeletons and full size life models of the animals that

One of the coolest, creepiest-looking crinoid fossils, this is a specimen of Jimbacrinus bostocki from Gascoyne Junction, Western Australia. It is from the Permian Period and is around 280 million years old. On display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. If you’re a fan of the Matrix movies, then you might recognise the shape. This species partly inspired the sentinels. | Dr Dean Lomax - Palaeontologist