Alan the dinosaur inspires electronic dance album

Prof Claire Hind and Dr Rob Wilsmore perform as The Long Dead Stars

Two scientists have created a concept album partly inspired by a dinosaur named Alan found in North Yorkshire.

Prof Claire Hind and Dr Rob Wilsmore from York St John University formed The Long Dead Stars, an electronic dance poetry group, with the duo also finding inspiration from the geology of the county's coastline.

The creative project is part of a scheme aiming to find alternative ways to engage people with art, science, and the landscapes of North Yorkshire.

"Rocks have a life, they have vitality, and dance music is something that's vibrant, alive, and about the body and moving," Dr Wilsmore said.

The pair wanted to compose a track about a Sauropodomorph fossil found in 1995 in Whitby and on display at the Yorkshire Museum.

Its name was inspired by Alan Gurr, who made the discovery, with the fossil regarded as the oldest sauropod dinosaur found in the UK.

"I felt like I was getting connected to deep time and this idea that there's layers of different rock formations that expose different fossils from different time periods," Prof Hind said.

The UK's oldest sauropod fossil was discovered by Alan Gurr in Whitby in 1995

The album also features tracks dedicated to the dark skies of the North York Moors National Park and the fossils of Jurassic-era "tiny sea creatures" found at Boggle Hole.

"Pop music is generally about love," Dr Wilsmore said.

"It's not generally about oolitic shelly lifeforms."

Speaking about creating the music, Dr Wilsmore said finding melodies was like finding fossils on the beach.

"Rather than being this really dry project, we wanted our research to be fun as well as serious," he added.

Explaining the band's name, Prof Hind said: "We love this idea that a percentage of our atoms in our bodies come from an exploding supernova from a long dead star."

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