Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Boneyard #26: My Favorite Museums

Welcome to my entry to the 26th edition of Boneyard!



Brought to you through The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, this Boneyard focus is on our favourite museums. Having visited natural history museums in North America, Europe and Asia, I have many favourites.

One of my favourite museums in Europe is the Palaontologisches Museum Munchen in Munich, Germany. A wonderful three-leveled museum crammed with loads of mounted skeletons and fascinating fossils, it is famous for having one of the 10 fossils of Archaeopteryx, the first bird!

The Palaontologishes Museum Munich is notoriously difficult to find, as it is hidden down a side road and associated with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (took me two trips to find it - 2004 and finally in 2007!) Check it out on a map here.

Here is a look inside Munich's Palaeontological Museum:



The main hall. The museum is composed of three floors overlooking a central space. Here is the ground floor. Notice the Gomphotherium in the center.

Allosaurus skull

Triceratops skull

A cast of the AMNH Monoclonius nasicornus (Brown)

The placodont Placodus

Scutosaurus

Plateosaurus

Prestosuchus

Megaloceras

Cave Bear

Moa

Smilodon (Saber Tooth Cat)

Gomphotherium

Top view of the Plateosaurus

Pteranodon ingens


Three wicked large ammonites

The Archaeopteryx display case. Notice the two halves of the Munich Specimen (S6), discovered in 1991 and described by Peter Wellnhofer in 1993.

The right side of the Munich Specimen of Archaeopteryx - complete except for the front of it's face.
The left side of the Munich Specimen

A map of the limestone deposits near Solnhofen, Bavaria where Archaeopteryx is found.

A 3D reconstruction of a mounted Archaeopteryx


Archaeopteryx fully reconstructed

A selection of woolly rhino skulls


Looking down through Time


A beautiful Ammonite fountain behind Munich's Palaeontological Museum.

It's a wonderful museum.
Be sure to visit it the next time you are in Munich!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome exhibits! Awesome photos! AND Awesome Museum!! I WILL have to check it out sometime. First thing's first take a camera and learn some German.

Peter Bond said...

Munich is an amazing city and is a lot of fun! I highly recommend visiting it! Europe rocks!

Zach said...

Looks like a wonderful museum. I've seen pictures of that Pteranodon skeleton, and now I know where it's from. Two quick notes:

1) Barnum Brown's "Monoclonius" was, like so many specimens of that genus, sunk into Centrosaurus a long time ago. Only one or two skulls remain loyal to the former name, and even they might be going out of style since it looks like "Monoclonius" might just be a growth phase in the life of centrosaurines rather than a distinct taxa. In other words, Monoclonius represents a teenage centrosaurine dinosaur of uncertain affinities.

2) That nothosaur looks more like a placodont!

Dinorider d'Andoandor said...

I can see Munich has many beautiful places, the castle, landscapes, this museum! ... liked the wooly rhinos, pteranodon and Archie! BTW this is the first time I see a "naked" scutosaurus! I only knew the Walking with Monsters animal.

Anonymous said...

I'm so jealous! Shame on you for posting this. Show off!

Anonymous said...

Someday I must get to the Munich Museum...

Note, however, that the "nothosaur" is actually the placodont Placodus, and the "Albertosaurus" is Allosaurus"

Peter Bond said...

Zack: Thanks for your notes on "Monoclonius." I put it here as the Munich museum uses it in it's identification tag! And you were totally right about the placodont! Nice one!

Dinorider: Yeah, I saw another Scutosaur in Korea this year, and he was the same size. But the creature in Walking with and Primeval seems HUGE! So much beggier! Weird...

Marek: Don't be jealous! Just get yourself a ticket to Munich!

Thomas Holtz: You'd love the Munich Museum! Thanks for commenting and helping me out with the identification of the Allosaur skull - it sure looks strange. Thanks!