Museu da Lourinhã is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

in the town of

Lourinhã Lourinhã () is a municipality in the District of Lisbon, in the Oeste Subregion of Portugal. The population in 2011 was 25,735, in an area of 147.17 km². The seat of the municipality is the town of Lourinhã, with a population of 8,800 inhab ...

, west

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. It was founded in 1984 by GEAL - Grupo de Etnologia e Arqueologia da Lourinhã (Lourinhã's Group of Ethnology and Archeology). The president of the Direction Board is Lubélia Gonçalves. The museum has very complete exhibits of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

and

ethnology Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

, but the main focus of the museum is the palaeontology hall, which presents casts of famous

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 ...

s, as well as fossils recovered from the Late

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and 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 Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

Lourinhã Formation The Lourinhã Formation () is a fossil rich geological formation in western Portugal, named for the municipality of Lourinhã. The formation is mostly Late Jurassic in age (Kimmeridgian/Tithonian), with the top of the formation extending into the ...

. Among these is the famous

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...

nest found at the beach of Paimogo, which contains eggs with embryos inside, probably belonging to '' Lourinhanosaurus''. Many of the fossils that belong to the Museu da Lourinhã are on display at Dinoparque Lourinhã, such as the sauropod ''

Zby atlanticus ''Zby'' is an extinct genus of turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Jurassic (late Kimmeridgian stage) of the Lourinhã Formation, central west Portugal. It contains a single species, ''Zby atlanticus''. It is named after Georges ...

'', '' Lourinhanosaurus antunesi'', and '' Torvosaurus gurneyi''. The paleontological research has been conducted by the paleontologists Miguel Telles Antunes,

Octávio Mateus Octávio Mateus (born 1975) is a Portuguese dinosaur paleontologist and biologist Professor of Paleontology at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He graduated in Universidade de Évora and received his PhD at U ...

and others, in association with the

Universidade Nova de Lisboa NOVA University Lisbon ( pt, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, ), or just NOVA, is a Portuguese public university whose rectorate is located in Campolide, Lisbon. Founded in 1973, it is the newest of the public universities in the Portuguese capital c ...

. The museum receives about 25.000 visitors every year. The museum allows people to volunteer for its activities.

References

External links

* Museums established in 1984 Museums in Lisbon District Archaeological museums in Portugal Anthropology museums Natural history museums in Portugal Dinosaur museums {{dinosaur-stub