Museum fur Naturkunde!

17th of September 2008

Museum for Natural History of the Humboldt University, Berlin.
Brachiosaurus Brancai
As tall as a five story building....
As heavy as ten elephants....
Footprints as big as bathtubs....
Upper thigh as long as a grown man....
Ate 200kg of plants a day (about 200 heads of lettuce)!!
(taken from the back of Ashie's shirt)

We finally made the trek out to see the amazing Dinosaur collection in Berlin. Upon entering the museum foyer you are greeted by the recreated head of an angry looking Allosaur peeking out looking for something or someone to eat. Inside the main foyer is an amazing display of dinosaur skeletons stretching up 5 stories high in the case of the the Brachiosaur (which this skeleton has the official Guiness world record for being the tallest assembled Dinosaur on display) and probably the same distance length ways for the Diplodocus which stretched out of room. Also on display was a Steggosaurus and various other Raptors. It is a very impressive collection and well displayed. It felt like walking in the foyer of Jurrasic Park without the fear of being eaten.

Scattered around the rest of the foyer was in equally impressive collection of fossils of fish, aquatic life and plant species. It really gave you a glimpse into life on the planet in the past. The foyer also had special binoculars that when pointed at the various skeletons added muscle and skin the dinosuars and animated them, showing movement, sounds they made and their various habitats.

Moving on the next section was about the creation of the Earth. It had various displays about how different rocks are formed, simulated earthquakes, volcanoes and also an interactive map showing the movement of tectonic plates and the continents from the time of the dinosaurs through to 100 000 years in the future. FYI Aussies, we are moving further north and losing Tasmania.

Also in this room was interactive exhibits on asteroid collisions with the Earth. It showed the impact that killed off the dinosaurs and had examples of other impact craters from around the world. This room adjoined an area dedicated to space and the planets. In the centre of the room was a circular lounge that allowed you to lay flat and watch a time lapse video played on the ceiling showing the creation of the universe, our solar system the planets and moons. Once the creation process was complete the video zoomed in on the earth from space zooming into the museum showing everyone that was laying on the couch watching, it then proceeded to zoom out again this time moving past all the planets out of our solar system, through and then outside of the milky way and past the billions of other galaxies also floating through the galaxy. Made you feel rather small and insignificant really (hate to imagine what the ant next to me thought of it all).

The rest of this room housed hundreds of different examples of fallen meteorites, some very beautiful and alien looking. Upstairs from here was a bunch of closed rooms that you could look into. Information on each of these rooms explained their purpose and that most of them were damaged in the war and were now used for storage purposes of row after row of stuffed animals, rock collections, fossils and preserved animals in jars. Was mind boggling the amount of stuff that wasn't on display.

Back downstairs was the animal exhibits, which started with a section on Natural selection. The entrance to the room was a massive wall of mammals, birds and fish giving a small glimpse into the diversity of life on this planet. Moving through the exhibit we were shown lots of examples of how animals have evolved to meet the demands of their surroundings. Was very interesting and all the exhibits were beautiful to look at, though Darwin's theory never did explain the benefits of male baldness to me. Beyond this section was a similar setup on sea life, explaining reef systems, global warming and fishing threats and also showing various preserved specimens of fish, most over 200 years old, including Nemo's great, great, great, great, great grandfather clown fish, Harpo.

The remainder of the animal sections displayed a great section of stuffed animals from Africa and showed an example of deer from various sections of the world side by side, giving you a good picture of Darwin's theory by highlighting the shape of the horns and how they vary slightly from one point in the world to the next. The other African animals on display were beautifully preserved and displayed way beyond anything I have seen elsewhere. The room then moved on to a section dedicated to native animals of Germany and a very interesting section on Taxidermy, showing the processes used in the past and today by the museum. The had examples of the same species of animals that had been stuffed 100 years apart showing how far the processes had come in that time. The kids thought it was a bit gruesome, but was interesting to see how they get all the amazing displays for the museum made.

Running out of time we then did a quick run through the rock and crystal collection which again was massive, containing enough rocks to build a palace out of, and then moved through another skeleton room, containing the skeletons of animals from the period of the ice age and some single leg bones from other Brachiosaurs that were bigger then the kids.

Last stop of the day was the gift shop were Ashlen picked herself a couple of mementos and then home after a particularly exhausting day of information overload, you'll have an idea of how we felt after reading through all the above.