📸 Nice picture by visitor @faye.pieters in our Gallery of Evolution!
In the background you can see two skeletons of whale ancestors hanging from the ceiling. Whales evolved over some 50 million years from small four-limbed and hoofed land-dwelling mammals to fully-aquatic baleen and toothed whales. 🐋🐬
On the right is Maiacetus, that lived some 47 million years ago. It still has four legs and was amphibious: so it could swim, but also walk on land. And to the left of it is Dorudon, which hind legs are already extremely reduced, so it was already fully aquatic some 40 million years ago. Whale evolution is just one stunning science story to tell!
Want to know more? 🎬 Watch our YT video in which our fossil whale specialist Olivier Lambert explains an important find in Peru illuminating whale evolution and dispersal some 43 million years ago – so in between Maiacetus and Dorudon.
📸 We have the greatest visitors! Here's @aaikerogier with our special guest Arkhane in the Gallery of Evolution.
This specimen - a new species of Allosaurus according to our palaeontologists - was excavated in 2014 in central Wyoming. It's 155 million years old (Jurassic), 8.7 metre long and 70% complete.
We've made a three-part series (+ bonus episode) on this incredible specimen: who is he or she? Why do our paleontologists think it is a new allosaur species? How old was Arkhane when it died? How fast did it grow compared to other dinosaurs? And what about its late-night snack: the nanosaurus?
📸 Visitor @loudossogne face to facemask with our cast of T. rex 'Stan' in the Dinosaur Gallery.
We're pretty sure our T. rex cast is the most photographed and ‘selfied’ specimen in the Museum. It has become quite the symbol of dinosaurs as a group, and maybe that’s a pity, because it’s overshadowing an incredible variety of amazing other dinosaur species. What is your favourite one?
But hey, Tyrannosaurus rex IS a spectacular and terrifying predator. T. rex lived 69 to 66 million years ago, at the very end of the Late Cretaceous. It had 50 to 60 teeth as big as bananas. They are serrated - just like a steak knife - excellent for piercing the flesh of their prey and ripping off chunks of meat…The teeth were replaced throughout their lives.
In a recent study @naturalismuseum claims that T. rex probably walked more slowly than previously assumed, as shown by a 3D model that simulated the walk of T. rex ‘Trix’. She walked at 4.6 kilometres per hour - which is about the same speed as you! To prevent injuries, the living animal likely kept a relaxed gait. But as the authors note, this was not the maximal speed, but the animal's preferred walking speed.
Stay tuned for more T. rex mania this autumn! ;)
📸 Visitor Aicha Sefiaa and friends having a great time in our gallery Living Planet.
Living Planet represents more than 850 specimens displayed on 2,000 m2 (from the blue whale 🐋 to the smallest insects 🐜), with 3D models, visual media, audio interviews and interactive, recreational and educational animations.
The Earth 🦌 is swarming 🐦with life 🐢 and you 🐸 can rediscover it 🐟 through an aesthetic, family-friendly and scientific 🕷️ approach 🐛 to biodiversity 🦑
The upper floor of the gallery explains the abundance of species and habitats. The lower floor of Living Planet deals with the complex relationships these species have with one another and with their environment. Each species plays an important role and has its place in this web of life. ♻️
The gallery also explain our planet’s resilience to perturbations. But if they are too frequent and too heavy – as is the case in this climate and biodiversity crisis caused by humans – species disappear, food chains collapse and earth’s diversity declines.
Explore the gallery in a marvelous 'streetview':
Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen - Brussel.
Oh, and we just created new discovery areas for 6- to 12-year-olds in the gallery: Tetrapodium and Arthropodium.👐 Animals with 4 legs and animals with 6 or more will no longer have any secrets! Through play and by observing them closely you discover their bodies, their way of life and their interactions. The two new areas make your visit to Living Planet complete!
[Picture: @aicha_sefiaa]
Experience our Dinosaur Gallery and Mosasaur Hall in a different way with Sauria (https://sauria.app), a challenging app and accompanying folding map. The app fires questions at you as you walk through our halls. If you answer them correctly, you can make dinosaurs appear on the map in 3D. Collect all five of them! Ideal to do together with friends or family.
Move your bones to our Museum with a full battery! http://bit.ly/SauriaEN
Holiday = perfect time to visit Plateosaurus ‘Ben’! After one and a half year of meticulous preparation in our paleo lab we could install the 210 million year old skeleton in our Dinosaur Gallery last December, with the help of more than 600 crowdfunders. The beautiful specimen was excavated in the clay quarry of Frick, in the North of Switzerland, by palaeontologist Ben Pabst and his team. Plateosaurus was one of the first long-necked dinosaurs and was a precursor of sauropods like Diplodocus. Like the Iguanodons of Bernissart in our Gallery, Plateosaurus ‘Ben’ is an authentic and almost complete dinosaur skeleton.
135 years after the Bernissart Iguanodons, the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels showcases an authentic and complete dinosaur fossil: Ben, the Plateosaurus from Switzerland.
After one and a half year of chiselling, gluing and welding, Ben the Plateosaurus – 6.4 meters long and 210 million years old – is the new star of our Museum of Natural Sciences. Plateosaurus was one of the first long-necked dinosaurs, possibly an ancestor of Diplodocus. This is Ben’s story.
Frick, summer of 2007: Eureka!
Swiss palaeontologist Ben Pabst and a group of students search the clay quarry of Frick for dinosaur fossils. The chance of finding Plateosaurus remains is not small: since the seventies, more than 30 complete and incomplete Plateosaurus skeletons were found there. Frick is a Plateosaurus cemetery. This time, the paleotrippers dig up a beautiful specimen, but it almost goes wrong. ‘Right after we uncovered the fossils, we were hit by a storm’, Pabst remembers. ‘We built little dams for an hour, to prevent the fossils from washing away in the flood. We were soaking wet.’
Brussels, May 2016: ‘Ben’
Four wooden boxes, together weighing around half a ton, are delivered in the palaeontology lab of the Museum of Natural Sciences. They are filled with white packages, some big and some small. ‘Kinder Surprise Eggs’, technician Aldo says, starry eyed. They are a tad harder to open than the chocolate eggs: the content is protected by 210 million year old sediment and a layer of aluminium foil, jute and plaster. Revealing the 200 fossilized bones with a pneumatic chisel – which looks like dental drill – is meticulous work. That is why the Sauriermuseum in Frick, where the many Plateosaurus fossils are beginning to take up a lot of room, makes a deal with the Museum of Natural Sciences: the fossil can be exhibited forever in Brussels, if the Institute can find the money and the personnel to prepare everything. The job goes to Aldo Impens, Stéphane Berton, Jonica Dos Remedios and some volunteers. The Brussels-Capital Region supports the project financially.
The fossil is named Ben, a tribute to its discoverer. Ben Pabst is not new to the Museum. In 2002-2003 it showcased 8 fossils from the Jura (among which a Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus). All of them specimens that Pabst helped excavate in the How Quarry in Wyoming (US) in the nineties.
Brussels, November 2016: Patience is a Virtue
For months now, a long and loud ‘bzzzzzz’ can be heard in the paleolab. It is only interrupted to coat the revealed bones with ‘mowilith’, a liquid plastic that fills the microscopic cracks in the bones and keeps them together. Without it, the fossils would pulverize sooner or later. ‘They are more fragile than glass’, Stéphane Berton warns. Years ago, the former security guard retrained to be a palaeontology technician. ‘At all times, you have to be careful not to drill into the bones. Luckily, the colours show where the sediment ends and the fossil begins.’
Brussels, February 2017: Plateoteam
The Museum has received money to ‘prepare’ Ben, but has to find the means to showcase the skeleton through crowdfunding. After extensive media attention and a benefit, Ben seduces more than 600 crowdfunders, who together raise 50.000 euro. The money will be used to make a metal frame, a podium, a making-of video and further embellishment of the Dinosaur Gallery, which Ben shares with the Iguanadons that were found in Bernissart 140 years earlier. They are still one of the most import dinosaur discoveries ever, the only other authentic dinosaur skeletons in Belgium.
Brussels, April 2017: Dinosaur Puzzle
A sigh of relieve is heard in the paleolab: after almost one year of nonstop working, all beige-brown fossils are neatly arranged on a large table, in open boxes, every one of them labelled to ease the assembly. The fossils are actually from two individuals of the same size, ‘07’ and ‘08’. The second specimen was found in the summer of 2008. The Frick Museum promised a skeleton that was at least 80 percent complete, and now the palaeontologists and technicians can check that. They make an inventory: 50 bones on the hind limbs, 42 on the front limbs, 47 vertebrae from the sacrum to the tip of the tail, 15 dorsal vertebrae, 10 neck vertebrae, 26 ribs, 32 'chevrons' (bones at the bottom of the tail),... it checks out! The missing parts are replaced by sculptures, with a strong core of polyurethane and layers of synthetic plaster. ‘In the future, we hope to create these with a 3D printer’, Aldo says.
How do you know what a missing bone looks like? For a limb, it is easy: just mirror the bone of the opposite leg. For other bones, they have to search earlier Plateosaurus studies. The skull is built based on a replica of a skull that was found in Trössingen, Germany, in 1911. There and in France, dozens of other Plateosaurus fossils were found. ‘210 million years ago, ‘Plateos’ where all over the place’, Aldo says. ‘They were the first large dinosaurs and because of their size, they were rarely bothered by predators. Let me put it this way: they could eat and mate all day. They only had to be careful not to get stuck in the mud, which possibly happened with Ben and many other Plateosaurs in Frick.’
Brussels, July 2017: A Tailor-Made Frame
After an irritating delay of a couple of weeks, the metal for the frame arrives. Temperatures rise in the tent where Aldo works the metal, in a shower of sparks. All fossils – up to the smallest hand bone – have to be able to rest on the ‘coat hangers’. The fossils themselves are way to brittle to drill. ‘This is my dream job’, Aldo says. ‘It will not make me rich, but building a dinosaur is a priceless experience.’ Meanwhile, Stéphane is painting the sculptures brown. ‘We are playing it fair: the public will be able to see the difference between the real fossils and the copies.’
Brussels, October 2017: Six
Palaeontologist Koen Stein (VUB) has news. His analysis shows that Ben was around six years old when he died. Stein came by in July, to sample a paper thin piece of Ben’s femur. The scans of that sample – with so-called X-ray fluorescence – show the calcium content, which indicates bone tissue (blue) and the titanium content, for blood vessels (red). ‘A blue line means a delay in growth: that was the dry season, when there was less food’, Koen says. ‘Between two blue lines there is a ‘red’ period of rapid growth and fast augmentation of blood vessels in the bones. That was in the rain season, with lots of green. Not all vertebrates have such a ring pattern. The descendants of Plateosaurus, sauropods like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus, continuously grew, which made them so gigantic.’
Brussel, November 2017: The Curtain Falls
The frame is brought to the Museum hall. It is fixed to the ceiling at the tail, and is supported at two points: under the belly and the shoulders. When Aldo, Stéphane and their colleagues have fixed all of the fossils on the frame, Ben is ready to face the masses.
Plateosaurus Ben is permanently on display and marks the tenth anniversary of our Dinosaur Gallery: www.naturalsciences.be.
Did you know our Institute has a new dinosaur? A magnificent Plateosaurus, measuring about 7 metres in length. We received the 210 million year old specimen from the Frick quarry in Switzerland. Our technicians are working tirelessly to release all the bones from their sediment, so we can present him in our Dinosaur Gallery by December 2017.
But this is where we need your help. We are looking for 25.000 euro to exhibit Ben (we named him after Ben Pabst, who discovered the Plateosaurus).
Join our Plateoteam and help us bring an authentic and almost complete dinosaur fossil to our Dinosaur Gallery for the first time in over a 100 years!
Donate and spread the word about this crowdfunding project!
