Mo H.
Google
I visited the Museum of Evolution on a Sunday morning shortly after opening, and spent around an hour photographing the many specimens on display.
This museum is cash-only; although I could see a card reader, the admissions person would not let me enter by card, and had to pay with cash. Once I entered, I found myself in the lower floor of the Palace of Culture, several adjoining rooms with large dinosaur skeletons as the centrepiece.
A room off to the side was devoted to fossils of aquatic life, mostly invertebrates such as ammonites, and fish. I was not able to find anything clearly labelled as tetrapod, such as an ichthyosaur or crocodile fossil.
However, all of the rest of the displays focused on this group, including mammals, but notably dinosaurs, of which many specimens from Mongolia and North America were on display. These included many individuals of Protoceratops, a frilled dinosaur, Oviraptor eggs, skulls of the thick-headed dinosaurs Homalocephale and Prenocephale, and skulls of “duck-billed” hadrosaur Saurolophus. Many of these were casts or models, but there were several original specimens on display, some of which were indicated (in Polish).
Of particular interest to the palaeontologist or dinosaur fan are original bones and casts of the long-necked dinosaur Opisthocoelicauda and likely-related genus Nemegtosaurus, including the whole skeleton featuring casts of bones from both genera, several individuals of Tyrannosaurus-relative Tarbosaurus, and original specimens of rare and unusual dinosaurs like Elmisaurus, Borogovia, and Bagaraatan (the original dentary, labelled as Tarbosaurus bataar).
Other animals from Poland on display include possible dinosaur Smok wawelski, distant relative of early mammals Lisowicia, early relative of dinosaurs Silesaurus, and gliding animal Ozimek volans. It was great to see a display of multituberculates, a group of mammals alive during the reign of the dinosaurs, together with a poem dedicated to Polish palaeontologist Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska.
On the whole, something for all dinosaur fans or fossil enthusiasts, and you will learn something new, even if you already consider yourself clued up on Polish or Mongolian palaeontology.
