The Maasvlakte 2 museum

[Max-fossils]

Hi everyone,

 

Last Thursday I had a school trip to the harbor of Rotterdam, the biggest harbor in Europe and 10th biggest in the world. We were specifically in the Maasvlakte 2 area, the newest addition to the harbor to accommodate larger ships and more containers. There's a small museum there which we visited. The intent of the trip was to discover more on how the harbor evolved to fit the needs of the world in the ever-growing globalization of the planet. However what no one else in the class knew (because no one else in the class is as crazy as we all are ) is that the sand used to make the artificial beach of the Maasvlakte 2 is full of fossils. Same story as for the Zandmotor (and many other fossil-containing beaches in the NL), the sand used to make the artificial beaches is extracted from the North Sea floor, which is very rich in fossils, especially of Pleistocene age. I was really hoping to be able to have some free time during the trip in order to go on the beach and hunt a little bit (I've already been there once, some 4-5 years ago), but that unfortunately didn't work out. Luckily in the small museum they had a section dedicated to the paleontology of the beach, and I had the pleasure to visit it. 

 

Big mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) tusk. This one is probably not from the beach itself but rather dredged from the North Sea.

 

And here's a view of the small exhibition with a big mammoth hip and femur (I think they're casts though). 

 

[Max-fossils]

Here are the finds showcased in the museum. These are all from the Maasvlakte 2 beach, and have been collected by a certain Walter Langendoen. Needless to say he made some pretty cool finds! The numbered bones can all be found back on the animal info sheets above the case (pictures a bit later in this thread).

Over here we have some early Holocene artifacts on the left (bone/wood on the top, flint on the bottom) and some Pleistocene fish vertebrae and bones beneath the big rib. In the glass boxes we have one with small fish teeth, one with small mammal bones (mostly different rodents like mice) and small mammal teeth (again mostly rodent), most likely all from the late Pleistocene. Then beneath that we have some gastropod steinkerns which are probably Mio-Pliocene.

[Max-fossils]

Lots of cool fossil bones. These are mainly late Pleistocene (last Ice Age, around 40'000 years ago), although there are also some older Pleistocene things around too.

[Max-fossils]

More cool Pleistocene fossils  

[Max-fossils]

[Max-fossils]

[Max-fossils]

Here are the animal info posters. If you look at the skeleton drawings of each animal, you'll notice some numbers. These numbers correspond to the number of the bone, indicating which animal the bone belonged to and what bone it was. 

[Max-fossils]

[Max-fossils]

They also had a nice focus on the cave hyena, as many remains (especially coprolites) have been found here. 

[Max-fossils]

[Max-fossils]

Finally you have the miscellaneous things also found there (which obviously are given less attention by most, hence why they aren't labeled). I put numbers on them to tell you what each one is:

1) The famous Eocene shell Venericor planicosta

2) A fossil whelk Buccinum undatum from the Eemian (late Pleistocene, 120'000 years old) with a lot of tube worms on it

3) A heart cockle Acanthocardia tuberculata with some weird bryozoan (?) stuff encrusted on it; from the Eemian

4) The variegated scallop Mimachlamys varia from the Eemian

5) The lagoon cockle Cerastoderma glaucum from the Eemian

6) The boreal astarte shell Tridonta borealis from the late Pleistocene (~80'000 years old)

7) Some very big tubeworms, no idea what age

8) A small iron concretion

9) I think this one was a small oyster-like shell (Pycnodonte?) or a broken whale ear bone, can't remember

10) Some mineral (someone else help me out here )

11) A big fossil sea urchin, possibly from the Cretaceous

12) Amber pieces

13) No clue...

Numbers 7 to 13 are probably all erratic fossils/rocks, or "zwerfsteenfossielen" as called in Dutch. They normally don't appear in Eemian or late Pleistocene sediments but have been brought to the North Sea by rivers or moving glaciers. Technically the Venericor's are also erratic, but we know that they come from Zeeland or Belgium (while we don't really know where the other erratic stuff comes from). 

 

Well, that was it! Not much to show as it's only a small exhibit, but I still think some of you may find it interesting. I sure did, and I definitely enjoyed to stare at those great mammal finds!

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Max

[Tidgy's Dad]

Excellent and comprehensive report, Max! 

Thanks for taking us on this journey with you. 

[Max-fossils]

2 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Excellent and comprehensive report, Max! 

Thanks for taking us on this journey with you. 

Thanks Adam! Glad you liked it  

[ziggycardon]

Looks like a lovely museum, I will pay it a visit next time I visit Rotterdam  
Thank you for sharing  

[Max-fossils]

1 hour ago, ziggycardon said:

Looks like a lovely museum, I will pay it a visit next time I visit Rotterdam  
Thank you for sharing  

Glad you enjoyed. Do be aware that the Maasvlakte 2 is not in Rotterdam itself, and is actually quite far away from it, so make sure that you take the distance into account if you plan on visiting. Also, if you do go all the way there for the museum, you definitely have to do some fossil hunting yourself on the beach too! It would really be a missed opportunity otherwise! 

[belemniten]

Thanks for the nice pictures @Max-fossils ! I was there some time ago and it's really a small but very nice exhibition. Yesterday I tried to find some fossils at the beaches there but I wasn't really successful. Just a little phalange but maybe I didn't search at the right places ...

[Max-fossils]

15 hours ago, belemniten said:

Thanks for the nice pictures @Max-fossils ! I was there some time ago and it's really a small but very nice exhibition. Yesterday I tried to find some fossils at the beaches there but I wasn't really successful. Just a little phalange but maybe I didn't search at the right places ...

Agreed, it's definitely "klein maar fijn" (small but nice) as the Dutch would say. Sad to hear you didn't have much luck there. I haven't been to the beach itself in several years so I have no clue where the hotspots are.