HOW old is old? From February 10, the Yorkshire Museum, in York, is inviting visitors to discover the age of everything at its new interactive exhibition, Fingerprints Of Time.

From the 4.5 billion-year-old Middlesbrough meteorite to a can of baked beans at the back of the cupboard, everything is imprinted with the date it was made.

Through a wide range of activities and displays, museum visitors will be transformed into time detectives as they discover how we know so much about the past.

Camilla Nichol, curator of geology at the museum, says: "The whole idea of this exhibition is to make people think about how old things are - and how we know.

We'll be doing this in a fun and exciting way that lets people discover for themselves how we unlock the mysteries of time.

"It's designed to be a familyfriendly exhibition jam packed with facts about some of the world's most amazing events and objects."

The exhibition, which will run all year, begins by asking: "What is the oldest thing you can think of?"

A graphic will display suggestions such as ancient axes used by our ancestors, dinosaurs or platform shoes.

Visitors will be asked to place objects in their correct chronological order, before setting off to explore the exhibition's four zones: unlocking time, capturing time, today's date and the dating bar.

Unlocking time will explain how professional scientists find the invisible dates locked inside everything, from ancient bones of weird and wonderful beasts to meteorites.

Capturing time will consider how it is possible to work out the age of objects from the location where they were found.

Visitors also visit a mock-up of a crime scene to see how bluebottles can help solve a murder.

The dating bar offers the chance to solve the time vaults puzzle.

There will also be special events, such as How To Date A Viking, held every day during half-term.

Many of the exhibition's areas will be hands-on and colourfully illustrated to bring to life the techniques used by scientists.

The exhibition also will explore the idea of there being no time at all.

"Does it only exist in only our minds and on earth?" says Camilla. "After all, in space no one can hear the tick of a clock."

Fingerprints Of Time runs at the Yorkshire Museum, York, from tomorrow until December 31.