The State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart (german: Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart), abbreviated SMNS, is one of the two state of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

's natural history museums. Together with the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe) it is one of the most important repositories for state-owned natural history collections. Exhibitions are shown in two buildings, both situated in the Rosenstein park in Stuttgart: the Löwentor Museum (German: Museum am Löwentor) houses the

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

exhibitions, while the Museum Rosenstein in Rosenstein Palace focuses on biology and natural history. Every year, the SMNS is visited by about 110,000 people.

History

Prior to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the natural history collection of

was located at the Neckarstraße in downtown Stuttgart. A part of the exhibits were destroyed during the war, when the original building was destroyed by fire after Allied bombing. Luckily, most of the exhibits were sourced out and survived the war. Some specimens were also recovered form the rubble of the destroyed old museum building, including a spectacular

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared ...

today mounted in 3D in the Löwentor Museum exhibition. The biological specimens of the State's collection are displayed at the castle Rosenstein since 1954. For the paleontological collection, the construction of a new exhibition building began in 1981 and was finished in 1985. The principal exhibition area of Löwentor Museum consists of a single room, made up of three floors and over 3500 square meters (37'600 square feet) of exhibition area. The room has a height of up to 11 meters.

Permanent exhibition

The Museum am Löwentor exhibition focuses mainly on fossils from its home state of

in southwestern Germany, and other localities in Germany. The state is rich in fossils, including several famous classical localities. Especially well exposed are terrestrial and marine

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

, marine

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

and terrestrial

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

sediments. Therefore, the museum exhibits the early

prosauropod Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lon ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

'' Plateosaurus'' and other terrestrial animals from the Lower and Upper Triassic ( Buntsandstein and

Keuper The Keuper is a lithostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Keuper consists of dolomite, shales or claystones and evaporites that were deposited during the Middle and Late ...

, respectively), a wide range of marine fossils, mainly invertebrates, from the

Muschelkalk The Muschelkalk (German for "shell-bearing limestone"; french: calcaire coquillier) is a sequence of sedimentary rock strata (a lithostratigraphic unit) in the geology of central and western Europe. It has a Middle Triassic (240 to 230 million ye ...

, and a plethora of

ichthyosaur Ichthyosaurs (Ancient Greek for "fish lizard" – and ) are large extinct marine reptiles. Ichthyosaurs belong to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia ('fish flippers' – a designation introduced by Sir Richard Owen in 1842, altho ...

s, pliosaurs and

s, as well as

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...

s from the

Posidonia Shale The Posidonia Shale (german: Posidonienschiefer, also called Schistes Bitumineux in Luxembourg) geologically known as the Sachrang Formation, is an Early Jurassic (Toarcian) geological formation of southwestern and northeast Germany, northern Swit ...

and other Lower Jurassic formations. Furthermore, exquisite Jurassic ammonites and other invertebrates are shown in large numbers. The Cenozoic is represented by invertebrates and mainly vertebrates from various German localities, including a pleistocene elephant and a copy of a mammoth mummy. Also on exhibit is the skull of the prehistoric man of Steinheim (''

Homo steinheimensis The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or ''Homo heidelbergensis'' found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany. It is estimated to be between 250,000 and 350,000 years old. The skull is slightl ...

''). The museum also houses a spectacular collection of plant and animal fossils in amber.

External links

References

Part of this article was translated from the German Wikipedia article (June 20, 2009), versio

{{authority control Museums in Stuttgart

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

Fossil museums

History

Permanent exhibition

See also

External links

References