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Milan (northern Italy) is the second largest city in Italy and my hometown. I’ve spent a good deal of my childhood and formative years in the natural history museum, getting to know it very well. I also have had the chance of volunteering for almost two years in the paleontology collections. The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale was founded in 1838. During WWII air raids, the authorities refused to evacuate the scientific collections to a safer area, despite the very high risks. In 1943, fire bombs hit the museum and its entire collection (save for a very limited number of specimens) was forever lost. This is one of the worst loss in the history of Italian science. After WWII the museum acquired new collections, by exchange, purchase or through scientific expeditions. Nowadays, it possibly ranks as first in terms of number of specimens, among the Italian museums. There are five sections open to the public: introduction to paleontology, the animal tree of life and evolution, the geologic time scale, the dinosaurs hall and the ‘treasures hall’. Contrary to other permanent exhibitions (such as the mineralogical and paleoanthropological one), the paleontology section has not been renovated in a long time (save for a handful of displays) and that is one of the major issues: almost every explanatory panel is only in Italian and sometimes not up to date. Despite all of this, the exhibits are highly enjoyable. Starting from the 1970s the museum staff has been involved in field work campaigns in Italy and abroad. Some of the most relevant finds are now exhibited to the public. These include, just to name a few, fossils from the Triassic of Besano (Italy) and Madagascar, from the Jurassic of Osteno (Italy), from the Cretaceous of Lebanon and, last but not least, dinosaurs. Relevant fossils, purchased in the last few years, are displayed in the ‘treasures hall’. Let’s dive into some photos! The next 9 pictures depict specimens from the Middle Triassic of Besano. Note that a few of them are casts, but the originals are kept in the museum’s collections. Neusticosaurus edwardsii, a nothosaur reptile. This is an historical specimen, being the first Besano reptile described in a scientific journal (1854), as well as one of the very few fossils that survived the WWII air raids. Serpianosaurus mirigiolensis, a carnivorous semiacquatic nothosaur Mixosaurus cornalianus, the most abundant ichthyosaur from Besano Saurichthys curionii, one of the top predator fish from in the Triassic seas Macrocnemus bassanii, one the few terrestrial reptiles known from Besano Askeptosaurus italicus, a thalattosaurian sea reptile Besanosaurus leptorhynchus (holotype), one of the most impressive fossils ever found in Italy. An ichthyosaur, it measures 5 m (16.5 ft) in length. It was a pregnant female and 4 embryos have fossilized as well. Preparation took more than 15000 hours. This is a cast, the original being too heavy and delicate to be exhibited. First photo: the complete specimen. Second photo: close up of the skull region. Third photo (taken from Wikimedia commons): close up of the rib cage. Notice the circular structures, they are the vertebrae of the embryos Next are three dinosaur specimens. Unfortunately, all three are casts, but the originals of two of them are kept in the museum. Saltriovenator zanellai, the latest of the Italian dinosaurs to be described (2018), it originates from the lower Jurassic of Lombardy. Few bones have been preserved and they were freed from the rock with acid baths. The species is the oldest ceratosaurian known. In front of the museum there is a full scale reconstruction of the animal. (The first photo is taken from Wikimedia Commons) Scipionyx samniticus, one of the greatest paleontological discoveries ever made. This juvenile dinosaur (24 cm or 9.5 in long), recovered in the Early Cretaceous of Pietraroja (southern Italy) preserves much of the soft body parts (including muscles, cuticles, gut). This is a cast, the original is kept near to place of discovery and is seldom shown to the public Rostrum of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, from the Cretaceous of Morocco. It was bought from a fossil dealer. Spinosaurus’ skull elements are exceedingly rare (except for teeth). (Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons) Now, a fish exhibited in the 'introduction to paleontology' exhibition: Paranguilla tigrina, an eel from the Eocene of Bolca, which preserves the original pigmentation pattern Next, a display of concretions from the Triassic of Madagascar. You can see fish specimens (top left and lower right corner and a close up in the second photo), a shrimp (centre), two ammonites (top right corner) and a thylacocephan (lower left corner) These are sponges from the Cretaceous of France, England and Germany And now it is time for the ‘treasures hall’! A large slab preserving 8 complete trilobites from the Cambrian of Morocco An exceptionally preserved stingray from the Eocene of Bolca, northern Italy Pontosaurus kornhuberi, a pythonomorph reptile from the Late Cretaceous of Lebanon Bovid skulls from the Pleistocene of the Po river, northern Italy And, cherry on top, my absolute favourite fossil in the exhibition: a slab preserving countless sea stars (Astropecten irregularis), from the Early Pleistocene of northern Italy I wish I could show you even more photos, but many fossils (for instance those originating from the Jurassic of Osteno) are too small to show any detail in a photograph! In conclusion, the Natural History Museum of Milan, despite an often out dated exhibition layout, should be an unmissable stop for any paleontology enthusiast! Thank you for the attention, Italo40

Hello, As a complete beginner to fossil collecting (and by extension, identification), I'm a bit lost as to where to start looking for identification resources, and so I'm having a look at some general ID guides for UK fossils, and I saw that the NHM has published a collection of three books (Cenozoic, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic). I'm wondering if these are any good for a complete beginner such as myself?I f not, which ones can you recommend? Thank you

From the BBC : https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-59545622

Hi everyone Last Thursday I went to visit the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels as a little pre-birthday trip. I have visited this museum several times in the past few years, but this time I took my camera with me and thought it might be fun to do a photo tour of the museum for this forum Beware, this will be quite a big topic that might take a few days to complete as I took nearly 750 photo's in the museum (a lot will have to be sorted out though due to blurry quality, photo's of only name tags and doubles) as I wanted to show pretty much all fossil displays Especially the Hall of the Dinosaurs, the hall of the Mosasaurs & The Hall of Evolution will be quite complete tours Starting off with some snapshots of the hall of the minerals. The meteorite display room

3 fossils stolen from KU’s Natural History Museum by Dylan Lysen, LawrenceJournalWorld, October 22, 2019 https://www2.ljworld.com/news/public-safety/2019/oct/22/3-fossils-stolen-from-kus-natural-history-musuem/ Yours, Paul H.

Hey everyone - hope you're all doing all right For the past few days, I was for a short holiday in South England - and while I was in Oxford, I had the chance to see at the Natural History Museum a new, amazing exhibit called Out of the Deep. The display consisted of two remarkable, nearly complete skeletons of marine reptiles - both of them from the ~165-million-year-old Oxford Clay Formation of southern England. One of the skeletons was of a pliosaur (otherwise known as a short-necked plesiosaur) called Peloneustes, which had been discovered in 1994 in Yarnton (Oxfordshire). The other skeleton (nicknamed "Eve"), discovered in Peterborough (Cambridgeshire) in 2014, was of a longer-necked plesiosaur. According to Roger Benson, the skeleton might represent a new species. Both skeletons are really beautiful - and I'd recommend all of you to check them out The Out of the Deep display, with its two plesiosaur skeletons in all their glory Photo credit Oxford University Museum of Natural History Well-preserved mandible from the Peloneustes skeleton The nearly complete skull of "Eve" the long-necked plesiosaur... The Out of the Deep exhibit is truly a must-see!! -Christian

Yesterday I made a visit to the Natural History Museum of Maastricht (The Netherlands) for my Birthday The museum is only a 40 minute drive from where I live and it showcases the entire natural history of the region, the cool thing about this museum is that the fossils which are showcased here are all regional fossils from The Netherlands, Germany & Belgium. I am starting the topic off with 2 pictures of the special exhibit called Microsculptures, which shows giant detailed photographs of insects to show how magnifecent they are. Then I went on to the "Mosaleum" which holds "Bér" the holotype specimen of Prognathodon saturator

Sir Charles Lyell's historical fossils (London's Natural History Museum) accessible online, February 21, 2019, Pensoft Publishers https://phys.org/news/2019-02-sir-charles-lyell-historical-fossils.html Consuelo Sendino, The Lyell Collection at the Earth Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London (UK), Biodiversity Data Journal (2019). DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.7.e33504 https://bdj.pensoft.net/article/33504/ Although completely unrelated, the below article is quite interesting. Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? By JoAnna Klein, New York times, Feb. 20, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/science/zebra-stripes-flies.html Tim Caro, Yvette Argueta, Emmanuelle Sophie Briolat, Joren Bruggink, Maurice Kasprowsky, Jai Lake, Matthew J. Mitchell, Sarah Richardson, and Martin How. 2019, Benefits of zebra stripes: Behaviour of tabanid flies around zebras and horses. PLOS ONE. Published: February 20, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210831 Yours, Paul H.

I attended DinoFest at the Natural History Museum of Utah this year. Once a year they open up the prep lab and their storage room to the public. While I took more photos then I could ever post, here are the highlights.

Hi everyone, A couple days ago, during my stay in Berlin, I got to visit a very famous museum. The Natural History Museum of Berlin, of course! The expo's are amazing. I took so many pictures of everything! I'll only show a handful though, because I don't want to spoil the whole thing in case one of you has the opportunity to visit it. These are just some tasters to make you want to go there! Enjoy the quick virtual tour! Max

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46497406

On Sunday I took a trip to the Natural History Museum in London. I queued up before it opened at 10am and even before then there was a long queue. I have not visited this museum since I was a child and spent an entire day there (10am to 4.30pm - a long time). I was surprised as it is a lot bigger than I remembered and there was so much to see. This place has the most wonderful things and is an incredible place to learn. The museum showcases a Baryonyx, Sophie the Stegosaurus (the world's most complete Stegosaurus) and more! The moving Trex and Deinonychus are also really realistic in the way they move. If you like your dinosaur teeth, the Megalosaurus and Daspletosaurus teeth are out of this world! There is something for everyone in this museum and I would highly recommend that you visit here if you have not already! A lot of the dinosaur specimens are casts taken from other museums but they are still cool to look at. I had taken the photos on my SLR and due to the size of the photos I had to reduce the quality of them to be able to post on the forum which is unfortunate but it's the only way otherwise the photos would take a really long time to load. There are more non-dinosaur related photos that I will be posting at some point later on but may take me some time to pick out. Enjoy the photos from this section of the museum! Blue Zone Dinosaurs (has a mix of some photos of crocs too)

Hi everyone, I was just scrolling facebook a few moments ago and came across a few posts by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and saw that there is a new documentary series about the museum itself on Canvas, the series is called "Er was eens" and the first episode that will air today at 19u will be all about the fossil collection including the Iguanodons of Bernissart & Plateosaurus Ben. So maybe a tip for everyone that has the network "Canvas" in Belgium & the Netherlands. https://vimeo.com/297901181?fbclid=IwAR2F5eIbYwzRKCAtfwcYIG8EZsXwZZF2nUhtUPw3dIYAQem_YrSLLP-t3TQ And the museum also posted that the science magazine EOS will do a 82 pages big special on the iguanodons of Bernissart, maybe another tip for all the belgian & dutch member, I'll definiatly get myself a copy!

As some might have read in a previous topic, I went to visit my girlfriend in Finland. Unfortunatly Finland must be one of the worst places to find fossils in the world, I did manage to find some quartz vains and a few pieces that may or may not be amber (have to do the hot needle test on them first) Even urban fossil hunting is near impossible as pretty much all buildings are made from the fossil-lacking stones that can be found in Finland. The only urban fossils I found was in the Burger King in the Helsinki Central Station, the floor was littered with orthocones there. But Finland really isn't a good place to hunt fossils. But one thing that definitly is a worth a visit is the Finnish Museum of Natural History! It isn't a really big museum, the collection isn't that big, but the way it is presented is very awesome! One of the few musea that nails being modern and educative at the same time without overdoing it. Especially the Taxidermy diorama's were done amazingly. But I will ofcourse start this topic with what I think will interest you guys the most, the Paleontology part of the museum. A mural with Pikaia, Opabinia & Hallucigenia models Trilobites, most of which were found in Aland (Finland), Gotland (Sweden) and other neighboring countries of Finland Trilobites, most of which were found in Aland (Finland), Gotland (Sweden) and other neighboring countries of Finland Orthocone models Graptolites Eurypterid found in Saarermaa in Estonia (Silurian age) Eurypterid model Giant orthocone model

My first post here. A chance to visit the Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History in Japan. Stunning fossil display and great signage design. Please see the photos. Also, I'm now studying the visitor experience development in natural history museums. Can anyone spare 3 mins to do an online survey? It's all about natural history museums. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BLKHYCW

In June 2016, during a trip to Italy, I went for a morning to the Natural History Museum of Milan to check out the fossils they had. I was slightly disappointed when I learned that the Scipionyx samniticus holotype specimen was no longer housed over there, but the museum did on the other hand have some rather neat fossils. Here they are 2 labyrinthodont skulls from the Permian of Madagascar (Sakamena Formation?), preserved as part and counterpart: 1) Parotosuchus madagascariensis 2) Indeterminate capitosaurid 3) Resin casts of the skulls Pterosaur phalange from the Triassic of Italy Dermal "armour" of a Bothriolepis canadensis from the Upper Devonian of Canada Edestus heinrichi (eugeneodontid chondrichthyan similar to Helicoprion) tooth from the Carboniferous of the USA (they didn't give more specific location details) Astreptoscolex anasillosus (polychaete worm) from the Carboniferous of Mazon Creek, USA Well preserved skull of Askeptosaurus italicus from the Triassic Besano Formation (Besano, Italy) Hope you liked it! Don't worry guys, I'll post more from this museum in the next few days.