A quick visit to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam

[Nanuqsaurus]

Hey everyone! Last weekend I visited the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam (or Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, but even if you don't speak Dutch I think you may have guessed that already). It's a rather small museum, but worth a visit if you happen to be in the area. They don't have any dinosaur fossils in their collection, but there are two prehistoric themed exhibitions which I hope you might still find interesting! I didn't take a lot of pictures, but maybe it can give you a general idea of what to expect if you visit it.

The first prehistoric exhibition is about ancient whales. The main eye catcher here is a cast of a Livyatan skull. Researchers from the museum in Rotterdam were among the team of people who found remains of this macroraptorial sperm whale in Peru in 2008.



Other whale fossils in this exhbition include remains found in the Westerschelde estuary, on the border of The Netherlands and Belgium. Among these are Scaldiporia vandokkumi, Tranatocetus maregermanicum and Nehalaennia devossi, as well as a yet unnamed whale.





The second prehistory themed room is called ''Picked up, Dredged, Hammered'' and is all about fossils found in the Netherlands. And there's more diversity in those than I had expected! When I think of fossils in my own country, I mostly think of ice age fossils which can be found on the coasts and sea floor of the North Sea, and of course the famous Mosasaurus from Maastricht. And those are both represented here, but this exhibition showed me that there was way more to find than just that! The displays are in chronological order and each is dedicated to a specific location. This makes it very educational.

Several Silurian fossils, mostly corals, from Groningen. Ice age glaciers transported the boulders containing these fossils from northern Europe to the Netherlands.



Triassic age fossils can also be found in the Netherlands. These are from Winterswijk, near the border with Germany. They include reptiles like Nothosaurus.



Triassic fossilized footprints from made by Rhynchosauroides peabodyi and Procolophonichnium haarmuehlensis.



Skull cast of Late Cretaceous sea turtle Allopleuron hoffmanni from Maastricht.



Cast of the famous Mosasaurus skull from Maastricht. The original (MNHN AC 9648) is the holotype of Mosasaurus hoffmanni and can be found at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France.



There are also plenty of other fossils from Maastricht on display, including belemnites, ammonites, crustaceans and sea urchins.

And last but not least, there are of course many ice age mammals on display, like this impressive mammoth skull.



As well as the lower jaw of the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium and much more.



Unfortunately those are all the pictures I have, I skipped over quite a lot in this little museum trip report, so hopefully I can go back someday and show you more. Or better yet, maybe you can go visit this museum for yourself if you are in the Rotterdam area!

[Halichoeres]

Well, I learned a few things from this post about the paleontology of the Netherlands. Thanks for sharing your photos!