A FREE street theatre event next month (July) offers families a fun way to find out more about fossil history.

Somerset Council and arts company Emerald Ant are opening the Iguanodon Restaurant for a special Dino Day at Ham Hill Country Park on Saturday, July 26, with funding coming from Arts Council England.

The show is billed as a ‘furious romp through 50 years of ground-breaking scientific discoveries’ – all seen through a fictional feast inside Iggy the Iguanodon.

“Imagine it’s New Year’s Eve, 1853, and in Crystal Palace Park a group of eminent professors and geologists are holding a sumptuous banquet in an unusual venue – inside the concrete cast of an Iguanodon,” a spokesperson said.

“Fossil-fuelled fun ensues as the dinner guests in the Iguanodon Restaurant, famous dinosaur hunters William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Mary Anning and Richard Owen wrangle over their amazing fossil finds.

“Is it a bird? A giant fish? An ancient crocodile? They debate questions around extinction and evolution – why do dinosaurs no longer exist? What does the stone beneath our feet tell us about the world? And what’s really in that blancmange? Find out in this highly visual, funny and peculiar performance, which will have British Sign Language interpretation.”

Councillor Graham Oakes, lead member for public health, climate change and environment at Somerset Council, said: “This is a fabulously fun way to learn more about our ancient past in the glorious setting of Ham Hill Country Park and tempt people into our local museums to see prehistoric finds for themselves.”

The Iggy performances will be accompanied on Dino Day by a drop-in workshop for people between four and 104, to learn more about fossils, dinosaurs and of their local museum.

For more information, visit https://emeraldant.com/iguanodon-restaurant.