Category: informationboards

Here lies the skeleton of Nehalaennia devossi, a whale that lived about eight million years ago in the North Sea. Nehalaennia was one of the first baleen whales in the world and an ancestor of the humpback whale and the blue whale, which still exist today. This seven-meter-long skeleton is unique in the world and […]

The king of the sea where Nehalaennia lived was Livyatan melvillei, a massive sperm whale. This sperm whale, with teeth measuring about 35–40 cm long, had the largest jaw ever – much larger and stronger than that of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Unlike a T. rex, this sperm whale could easily bite through a car. In […]

This is a reconstructed jaw of a shark with 160 (!) original teeth. The mako shark lived during the Miocene of Europe, from 23 to 5 million years ago, primarily in coastal waters (shallow seas), and could reach a length of over 6 meters. The many different teeth in this reconstruction were collected by Mr. […]

The largest shark to ever live was the Megalodon (scientific name Otodus megalodon). Megalodon means “big tooth,” and this shark certainly had enormous teeth. Between 20 and 4 million years ago, it prowled the world’s oceans. The Megalodon could reach a length of up to 18 meters, nearly three times the size of the largest […]

Immerse yourself in the marine life of eight million years ago in Western Europe. The exhibition “Primeval Ocean” takes you back in time. It was the era when sperm whales and 18-meter-long giant sharks ruled the seas. What no one could have known back then was that their days were numbered, as the newly emerging […]

Mosasaurus refers to a group of extinct monitor lizard-like marine reptiles adapted to life in water (marine environments); their ancestors lived on land. This is a textbook example of evolution. During the Late Cretaceous (98–66 million years ago), highly diverse forms evolved, adapting to open oceans, coastal waters, or specializing as “shell crushers,” consuming bivalves […]

Partial skeleton (part of the torso, the cervical vertebrae, and the upper and lower jaw) of a giant ground sloth from the genus Scelidotherium. Representatives of this genus were found exclusively in South America. These original skeletal parts come from the El Caño site, located 10 km northwest of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. These […]

Replica of a partial skeleton of an upright-walking, extinct humanoid named Lucy. Between 1973 and 1977, many fossils were discovered in Ethiopia, in the Hadar region of the Afar Triangle, including a relatively complete skeleton of a female nicknamed Lucy. In 1974, Lucy was the most complete known skeleton of a humanoid with a geological […]

Giant ground sloths emerged about 10 million years ago on the South American continent. Around 5 million years ago, they expanded their range through Central America into North America. These giant ground sloths are distant relatives of today’s sloths, which mostly live in trees and are significantly smaller. There were many different species of ground […]

The North Sea, located between the British Isles and the European continent, is one of the richest sites for fossilized mammal remains from the Ice Age, spanning approximately 2.5 million years. These fossils have been retrieved by so-called beam trawlers, which drag large nets across the seabed. In addition to flatfish such as sole, turbot, […]