Two Mesozoic reptile skeletons are permanently on display — a cetiosaur found in Rutland, and a plesiosaur from Barrow upon Soar.

The 15 metres (49 ft) dinosaur, which is among the most complete sauropod skeletons in the world, was discovered in June 1968, in the Williamson Cliffe quarry near Little Casterton in Rutland.

The new Dinosaur Gallery, which predominantly features extinct marine reptiles, was opened by David Attenborough.

[8] It is the first fossil that was ever described that came from undoubted Precambrian rocks, which until this point had been thought to be too early for large forms of life.

[9] The object in the museum – "Leicester's fossil celebrity"[10] – is a holotype, that is, the actual physical example from which the species was first identified and formally described.

Charnia masoni was named after Roger Mason, who discovered it at Charnwood Forest in 1957, when he was a schoolboy, and who went on to a career as an academic geologist.

He acknowledges, and the museum's Charnia display explains, that the fossil had been discovered a year earlier by a schoolgirl, Tina Negus, "but no one took her seriously".

[14] Edward VII regifted Pa-nesit-tawy to Oliver George Paulet Montagu who in turn gifted him to the Huntingdon Literary and Scientific society.

[15] Since 2020 the galley has been home to a statue of Husband and wife, Sethmose and Isisnofret purchased from the then bankrupt Thomas Cook Group.

[18] These paintings, including works by George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, were smuggled out of Nazi Germany before World War II.