Asked by James (aged eight)

At 43 foot (13 metres) long and weighing up to nine tons (heavier than one and a half African elephants), Tyrannosaurus Rex was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs to have lived, but not the biggest dinosaur ever. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was even longer at up to 59 feet (18 metres), and possibly twice as heavy. However, the largest dinosaurs were herbivores, not meat-eaters.

The largest dinosaur we know about from good fossils was the long-necked sauropod Argentinosaurus huinculensis, which was possibly 98 feet (30 metres) long (longer than three London buses end-to-end) and weighed over 90 tons (almost as much as 17 African elephants). Another sauropod dinosaur called Amphicoelias altus may have been larger, but the fossil bones of this creature are lost. Working out the size of dinosaurs is very difficult, because we very rarely find complete skeletons. Normally we only have a few bones available to estimate overall size and weight, so there may be many different estimates.

Dr Stig Walsh, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeobiology, National Museums Scotland

There isn’t an intrinsic method of dating metal as there is for wooden objects such as radiocarbon-dating or tree-ring dating. Much depends on the assessment of the object. For instance, an axehead made of bronze is likely to date from the Bronze Age, before knowledge of how to make iron. The date of the discovery of metal-working is going to vary in different parts of the world, but in Britain it will be towards the end of the third millennium BCE – roughly 2300-2000 BCE. The method of working the metal is also a crucial factor for ageing. Casting of iron only became possible during the Industrial Revolution in north-west Europe, for example.

Answered by Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum.

Abbey

Today Battle Abbey stands on the location of the famous battle and is maintained by English Heritage. A plaque marks the place where Harold is believed to have been killed.

Fyrd

A large part of Harold’s army at the Battle of Hastings consisted of fyrdmen, untrained peasants drafted in a similar way as conscripts to protect their homeland.

Jest

According to historical reports, the first man to be killed at the battle was William’s jester Taillefer, who after singing and juggling a sword, attacked the English shield wall and was killed.

Cross

The Battle of Hastings is the first conflict where crossbows are recorded to have been used in English history. The crossbow originated in East Asia in the 4th century BCE.

Christmas

William was crowned king on Christmas day 1066 at Westminster Abbey. He deposed Harold’s successor Edgar the Atheling who proceeded to wage many unsuccessful uprisings.

Widely considered by academics to be one of the most influential inventions of the past 1,000 years, the printing press set in motion both the democratisation of knowledge and the establishment of our modern, knowledge-based economies.

For the first time, valued texts could be produced in their thousands and – thanks to the co-evolution of nationwide and international trade routes – allowed texts to be accessed widely by the majority, not just the wealthy aristocracy and intellectual elite.

The man credited with the invention of the printing press is inventor Johannes Gutenberg, who lived and invented the press in Mainz, Germany. Here, around the year 1440 – an exact date is not known – Gutenberg designed a device based on screw presses that, when partnered with inked movable type heads, allowed paper to be quickly and efficiently pressed with letters.

The type heads were made by pouring a lead-tin alloy into a hand mould, and were then affixed to the top of movable, rectangular stalks. The stalks could then be arranged in order to create words and sentences within a rectangular container, before being fed under a screw press. The screw press then clamped a paper sheet on top of the type heads, pressing their ink onto the sheet.

While sounding crude by modern standards, in the 15th Century this was a groundbreaking invention. Before the Gutenberg press, texts were largely hand copied by monks and select few learned individuals. As such, the availability and cost of these texts was immense and they could only be accessed by a minuscule percentage of people.

Consequently, by the mid 16th Century and on to the Renaissance, printing presses had exploded all over Western Europe, producing millions of mass-produced texts on a diverse array of topics from politics to botany. Indeed, famous English philosopher Francis Bacon said that the emergence of typographical printing had “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.”

The prehistoric site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey covers about 13 hectares (32 acres), while the Palace of Knossos, Crete, covered an area of about 13,000 square metres (140,000 square feet). Pompeii covers an area of 60 hectares (145 acres) and has been described as ‘the most complete urban excavation ever undertaken’. This is tiny in comparison to the ruins of the temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which may cover up to 3,000 square kilometres (1,160 square miles)!

Answered by Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum.

Designed in the aftermath of the evacuation of Dunkirk by the British Expeditionary Force, the Churchill tank was Britain’s attempt to readdress the technology gap between their ageing Matilda II battalion and the German Panzer tanks that had them out- gunned.

The result was the Mark I, a heavily armoured battle tank equipped with a two- pounder main gun, three-inch howitzer in the rear and the most advanced and robust suspension system yet conceived. It was a defensive juggernaut, designed with one goal: to dominate the European theatre of war.

From its introduction in June 1941, the tank proved a reliable and versatile weapon platform capable of engaging targets quickly and efficiently. Key to this was its high speed of 26km/h (16mph) and excellent turning ability, characteristics made possible by its multiple-bogie suspension system. The suspension was fitted to the hull under two large pannier enclosures on either side, with the tracks running over the top.

Initially, the Churchill was fitted with a two- pounder main gun and three-inch howitzer (artillery piece); however, the former was soon upgraded to a six-pounder cannon and the latter replaced with a high-calibre machine gun.

These cannons gave the Churchill decent stopping power against medium armour, yet still left them short in firepower when compared with their German contemporaries. The Churchill’s main cannon continued to be improved throughout its lifespan, with 75mm guns fitted to Mk IIIs.

Despite its average firepower, however, the Churchill’s high manoeuvrability and excellent armour made it one of the foremost tanks of WWII, being extensively deployed in Europe and North Africa.

The story of Atlantis appears in accounts of two conversations between the Greek philosopher Socrates and his friends, Critias and Timaeus, written down by Plato over 2,000 years ago.

In the first account Atlantis was said to be a large island opposite the pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar). The king of Atlantis wanted to conquer lands around the Mediterranean but Athens resisted. The island of Atlantis and its people were later destroyed by the sea.

In another story the gods bring about the destruction of the island because of the arrogance of its inhabitants. The debate about whether Atlantis really existed has been going on ever since.

Some have claimed to have found ruins of sunken cities beneath the sea. One intriguing possibility is that the story of Atlantis is an account of the destruction of the island of Santorini in a volcanic eruption which is said to have brought Minoan power on Crete to an end. The story of Atlantis may simply be a warning about what happens to people who think themselves all powerful. Or it may be a half-remembered story
about the eruption of Santorini. Whatever the case it has captured our imagination and it will continue to feature in films and books.

Answered by Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum.

It really depends on what you’ve found. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer. I’m sure any conservator would say the technique of preservation is dictated by the materials the artefacts are made from. Different materials have different chemical properties and characteristics. An object made of, say, iron might have to be cleaned and kept in a dry environment to prevent it from rusting. A bronze object too might need cleaning and keeping in a dry store to prevent bronze disease. A waterlogged wooden object could be treated by soaking it in water-soluble wax and then freeze-drying. It might be sufficient to clean and glue back together pieces of broken pottery, while gold
jewellery might need no intervention at all because gold is an inert (or non-reactive) metal.

Answered by Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum.

This is ‘true’ in the same sense that Superman can only be stopped by Kryptonite. Achilles was the greatest of all the Greek heroes who besieged the city of Troy in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. It is said that Achilles’ mother dipped him in the River Styx (the river of the Ancient Greek Underworld) to make him impervious to wounds. Achilles’ heel did not go into the water because that was where she was holding him and so it was the only place where he was vulnerable. In Greek mythology the Trojan prince Paris shot Achilles in the heel with an arrow and killed him. A person’s ‘Achilles’ heel’ has become proverbial for a critical weakness, like saying ‘the chink in the armour’. The city of Troy was later captured by the Greeks and its inhabitants killed or enslaved.

Answered by Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum.

Deinosuchus is a large alligatoroid from the late-Cretaceous (73-80 million years ago) of the USA. It is in the same superfamily, but not an ancestor, of today’s alligators. Its body length is thought to have been up to 12m (39ft). The remains are incomplete, which makes it hard to accurately measure its length, but it’s possible to compare the bones with those of smaller alligator skeletons to get a rough size. Its maximum weight (not length) was said, in the journal Nature in 1999, to be between three and five times the weight of today’s largest crocodilians. There are several other giant fossil crocodilians and crocodylomorphs; the type specimen of rhamphosuchus is in the NHM.

Dr Lorna Steel, Palaeontology, NHM, London.