Johnstone was president of the Scarborough Philosophical Society, which raised the money to build the Rotunda and consulted Smith as to the museum's design.

The Rotunda Museum was built to Smith's design suggestion and the original display of fossils illustrated his ideas.

The fossils and rocks were arranged in the order in which they occurred, with the youngest in the cases at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

A section of the rocks on the coast was drawn around the inside of the dome of the building by Smith's nephew, another geologist, John Phillips.

The collection also includes a large selection of Cretaceous fossils from the Speeton Clay and the Chalk, a wide variety of Upper and Lower Jurassic specimens, specimens from the Ice Age such as mammoth teeth and fossils from the Kirkdale Cave and a pristine Carboniferous plant collection.

These give a taste of the quality and range of the fossils and minerals that have been found along Yorkshire's Dinosaur Coast which stretches from Redcar in the north to Flamborough in the south.

Supported by English Heritage, the project was designed to make the museum a gateway to the area's Dinosaur Coast and included creating a new entrance and installing a lift to improve disabled access.

This provided a new entrance area, offices and toilet facilities and allows access from the path to the building at basement level.