Pterosaurs, flying reptiles and close relatives of the dinosaurs, already developed feathers of different shapes and colours. This has been proven by a 115 million year old Brazilian fossil, studied by a team of palaeontologists. ‘Coloured feathers were used to show off’, says palaeontologist Aude Cincotta of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (@rbins). ‘Our study suggests that coloured feathers could already have appeared in the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.’

An international team of palaeontologists and geologists has found new evidence that pterosaurs had feathers of various colours. The discovery provides more insight into the origin and function of primitive feathers. The researchers published their findings in Nature.

The team from Brazil, Ireland, Belgium and France studied a 115 million-year-old pterosaur fossil from the Crato Formation in north-eastern Brazil. The fossil of this Tupandactylus imperator consists of the skull topped by an enormous crest of soft tissue, that has not been fossilized, but of which the imprint has been preserved. Feathers were attached to the base of the crest.

‘This is a spectacular discovery,’ says researcher Aude Cincotta (RBINS), who led the study. ‘For a long time, there was discussion about whether pterosaurs had feathers. As of now, we have firm evidence that this was indeed the case, and that the feathers were quite complex. We were able to distinguish two types of feathers in this Brazilian fossil: elongated, unbranched feathers and small branched feathers. The discovery of branched feathers is new in pterosaurs. They were only known for certain carnivorous dinosaurs, the theropods, ancestors of birds.’

Showing off

A second important finding: fossil melanosomes. These are microscopic structures in the skin and in certain organs that contain the pigment melanin. In today’s birds, the shape of these melanosomes determines the color of the feathers. The analysis shows that the melanosomes in the two types of pterosaur feathers as well as in the soft-tissue crest have a different shape (elongated, ovoid or spheroid). These differences were only known in theropod dinosaurs (including birds).

This study shows that pterosaurs already had feathers with colour variations and that they were probably used for visual communication and display: to show off. The fact that these pigmented feathers are found in both dinosaurs and pterosaurs suggests that their common ancestor in the Middle or Late Triassic (about 250 to 200 million years ago) already had the ability to sport colored feathers.

Safeguarding fossils

Thanks to cooperation between Belgian and Brazilian scientists, national authorities, and a private collector, the pterosaur fossil could be repatriated to Brazil in February 2022. ‘It is so important that scientifically important fossils such as this one are returned to their countries of origin and safely conserved for posterity,’ says Edio-Ernst Kischlat of the Brazilian Geological Service, who co-authored the study. ‘These fossils can then be made available to scientists for further study and can inspire future generations of scientists through public exhibitions that celebrate our natural heritage.’

[Video: Stéphane Van Israël, @rbins]

Immediately after the extinction of the dinosaurs ☄️, it was more beneficial for mammals to be big than to be smart, concludes a new study we collaborated on.

It was not until ten million years after the dinosaur era that early representatives of modern mammal groups, such as primates, began to develop larger brains and a more complex range of sensory and motor skills. This would have improved their chances of survival at a time when competition for resources had become much greater.

Read the complete article on our website

[picture 1: a skull from our collections was one of the key fossils for this study in Science. Photo: Thierry Smith]

[picture 2: left is a reconstruction of the Eocene mammal Hyrachyus modestus, a rhinoceros-tapir ancesto, with already bigger brains; right is the small-brained Paleocene mammal Arctocyon primaevus, a carnivorous predator most closely related to the group including living pigs and sheep. Image: Sarah Shelley]

[picture 3: Crania and virtual endocasts of the Paleocene mammal Arctocyon primaevus (left, with smaller brain) and of the Eocene mammal Hyrachyus modestus (right, with bigger brain). Images: Ornella Bertrand and Sarah Shelley]

How we 3D scan our collections. A new Science Vlog.

Production: Stéphane Van Israël, @rbins

3D printed by nature: fulgurite! When a quartz-rich soil - like sand for example - gets struck by lightning, the quartz grains get so hot that they fuse together, forming a sort of hollow, glassy tube: a fulgurite or “fossilized lightning”.

Fulgurites can be found several meters below the surface. They must be excavated with great care, because they are very fragile.

We keep some of these “vitrified lightnings” in our collection, one of which is 8,4 (!) meters long and was dug up in 1955 in Zutendaal, Limburg (Belgium). What a stunner!

Biologist Nicolas Laurent and his team go on an expedition to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the remote village of Inkanamongo. The goal: find viruses in mammals to investigate how biodiversity loss affects the emergence of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola, Monkeypox, and those linked to Coronaviruses.

Production: Stijn Pardon and Nicolas Laurent, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (@rbins)

‘Big’ news! A fantastic acquisition for our collections: a nearly-complete skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur of about 20 metres in length. “Dan”, as we named him, may well belong to a new species of diplodocus-like dinosaurs.

Dan originates from Kaycee, Wyoming, where we participated in excavations in the last few years. This well-preserved specimen is 155 million years old (that’s the Upper Jurassic). Allosaurus Arkhane, exhibited at @rbins, was excavated at the same site, about 250 metres from Dan.

The preparation of the skeleton has started and will reveal many secrets in the next two years. And then Dan will become one of the many stars of our Dinosaur Gallery!

Not a T. rex but a Sea rex! This is the skull of Prognathodon solvayi.

Flashback to the end of the Cretaceous, some 70 million years ago: when tyrannosaurs ruled the continents, gigantic predatory lizards dominated the warm seas. Prognathodon was one of them. This animal belonged to the mosasaur family.

This nice specimen is very Belgian: it was excavated in 1889 in Ciply near Mons (Hainaut) and described that same year by Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo (who also studied our Bernissart Iguanodons!). As you can see the skull is very robust, with a long, flexible jaw and sharp teeth. Prognathodon surely had a powerful bite! Turtles, sharks, ammonites, … they all went down its throat!

Prognathodon solvayi was relatively small, barely reaching 5 meters in length, while other species potentially reached 10 metres and more. Mosasaurs in general had long hydrodynamic bodies, flippers for balance and a powerful tail for propulsion (an upside-down shark’s tail, with the fleshy upper lobe smaller than the lower). They were one of the greatest success stories of their time, and it took the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous – some 66 million years ago – to wipe them out completely.

This specimen is on display in our Mosasaur Hall. Another Belgian must-see is the near-complete 12.5-metre-long mosasaur skeleton (Hainosaurus bernardi) hanging from the ceiling.

Skeletons of hundreds of Ice Age hyena cubs found in Belgian cave highlight severe ecological event that struck northern Europe about 45,000 years ago

Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, have recovered more than 300 skeletons of cave hyena cubs from a prehistoric cave in southern Belgium. The remarkable number of cub fossils suggests that the cave was regularly used as a birth den by cave hyena mothers, but also points towards a well-known phenomenon in nature: siblicide in times of food shortage and high competition.

A team of international researchers re-examined a collection of thousands of prehistoric fossil remains from the Marie-Jeanne cave located near Dinant, Belgium. The site was originally excavated in 1943 by a team of Belgian paleontologists and were more recently dated by radiocarbon methods in Oxford. Results show that the site accumulated between 47,000 and 43,000 years ago. Not less than 15 different animal species were identified in this collection: horse, bison, woolly rhino, reindeer, as well as carnivore species such as wolf, cave bear, hyena and lion – a rather common faunal spectrum for that time period.

But something unusual caught the attention of the scientists. If cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) was a common species found in the prehistoric ecosystems, archaeologists and paleontologists mostly recover adult individuals, sometimes associated with some younger individuals. At Marie-Jeanne cave, not less than 323 hyena cubs were identified – a large proportion of them only being a few weeks old.

For Elodie-Laure Jimenez, lead author of this study and archaeologist at RBINS and the University of Aberdeen, these fossils are an important paleontological discovery. “Whilst fossils of cave hyena are pretty common in prehistoric sites in Europe, the high concentration of newborn cubs here at Marie-Jeanne cave is a phenomenon never seen before on the fossil record… nor the modern one for that matter. It is pretty puzzling”, she confesses.

Hyena behaviours in perspective

The cave hyena is an extinct subspecies of Crocuta crocuta, the modern spotted hyena living in sub-Saharan Africa. We know today that female hyenas isolate themselves from their clan to give birth in order to protect their offspring from aggressive interactions with fellow hyenas that could be detrimental to the lives of the youngling. Once the cubs have become stronger – oftentimes around 4-8 weeks – the mothers return to the clan with their litter, usually composed of two or three cubs. “The fact that only very few adult individuals were found at Marie-Jeanne Cave and that the majority of hyenas were only a few weeks old indicates that the site was not where the clan lived, but instead was mostly used as an isolated birth den by the mothers. And they did so for many, many generations!” says Jimenez. "This is an exceptional discovery because up until now, we knew very little about the social and reproductive behaviour of this key species of the Paleolithic ecosystem”.

Murder in the den

Since the number of cubs at Marie-Jeanne cave is far greater than what you find in any other palaeo-sites – not even in modern spotted hyena dens – the researchers suspect that an unexpected phenomenon occurred in this region at that time. “During periods of strong ecological pressures and prey depletion in the local environment, the weakest of the siblings end up being killed by the dominant, who then gets access to more maternal resources”, explains Jimenez. “This usually occurs when the mother has to travel longer distances in search of prey and has to leave the cubs behind for longer periods of time”.

During this period of the last “Ice Age”, sub-arctic climatic conditions struck northern Europe and many species had to adapt their behaviour to survive. In the northern latitudes (Great-Britain, Belgium, and “Doggerland”, the vast plains that are now under water in the English channel) our ancestors the Neanderthals largely relied on mega herbivores such as bison, woolly rhino or mammoth to get enough fat, proteins and clothing material. Therefore they were sometimes in high competition with other large predators like cave hyenas and both had to adapt their strategies by migrating long distances or hunting different species.

Humans vs carnivores

Identified for the first time by the British geologist William Buckland in 1823, the cave hyena populated the whole of Eurasia until its disappearance in Siberia, about 14,000 years ago. Due to its odd silhouette and scary “laugh”, the hyena is an animal that is not very present in our social imaginary. However, it was an essential large carnivore of the prehistoric ecosystems in which it played an essential role in maintaining its balance.

The new knowledge generated by this unique discovery and ongoing analyses will allow us to better understand the dynamics between prehistoric human species and large carnivores in northern Europe and how they adapted to the climatic variations of the Ice Age. It’s important to note that the Neanderthals disappeared from our northern latitudes just a few millennia later - around 40,000 years ago – after Homo sapiens had arrived in Western Europe. A combination of various ecological pressures then triggered the “Quaternary mass extinction”, from 35,000 to 10,000 before present, during which most of the mammals weighing over 40kg got extinct.

The study has been published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.

Trix vs Stan! Come and admire the two T. rexes currently exhibited @rbins.

In the first two pictures is the 3D-printed version of Trix, the specimen of our Dutch friends of Naturalis in Leiden. In the last two pics you see our cast of Stan.

Both of them:

- were top predators during the very last part of the Upper Cretaceous period, the last chapter in the book of dinosaurs (avian dinosaurs as current birds have written a nice sequel! )

- were excavated in the Hell Creek Formation of North America: Trix near Jordan in Montana , Stan near Buffalo in South Dakota (a 4 hour drive from each other).

- were prepared by the Black Hills Institute in Hill City, South Dakota

- are among the most complete of some thirty T. rex specimens known today

- have healed bite marks and wounds probably caused by other T. rexes

- had 50 to 60 teeth, some as big as bananas . They are robust and serrated allowing T. rex to bite through flesh and bone. The teeth were replaced throughout their lives.

- had well-developed senses: olfactory lobes almost as large as their brain, a highly developed inner ear that could perceive low frequency sounds, and small eyes ️ located towards the front of the skull (like we have) which demonstrates stereoscopic, 3D vision.

They also differ:

- Trix is seen as a female, Stan as a male, although palaeontologists are still debating…

- Trix is a bit longer and higher than Stan : 12.5 m vs 11.7 m; 4 m vs 3.64 m

- Both were old when they died, but Trix is the oldest T. rex so far: more than 30 years of age

- Trix is estimated to be at least 67 million years old, Stan 66 million.

- Stan was named after its finder: amateur palaeontologist Stan Sacrison, who discovered the first of Stan’s bone fragments. Trix is both an allusion to “T-rex” and to former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands: so Trix is the Queen of the Cretaceous!

- Stan has had more admirers so far as he is all over the world: it’s the most duplicated T. rex fossil.

- Trix is publicly available for research, Stan for the moment is not. The original specimen was auctioned and sold for 31.8 million dollars to an anonymous private buyer in 2020, making it the most expensive fossil ever sold. Its future as a study object and museum exhibit is uncertain at this moment.

[Pictures of Trix on Instagram by visitors @pavel_sb and @mrdieds ; of Stan by @elisebormans and @ omar_cirilli]

Supergene turns spider into a ‘macho male’

Biologists from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (@rbins)found in a spider species that ‘macho males’ have an extra set of genes that is lacking in feminized males. The study in Nature Ecology & Evolution explains how individuals of the same species can develop a strikingly different morphology. “We saw that throughout evolution genes may become grouped together and form a 'supergene’. As a result, they are neatly inherited in a single bundle”, says evolutionary biologist Frederik Hendrickx. Having that supergene or not makes the difference between looking very masculine or feminine in the males of this species.

In nature, you sometimes find two drastically different 'types’ within the same species and even within the same sex. For example, a primrose species has specimens with elevated anthers and anthers that are deeper in the stem, or damselfly and butterfly species with individuals having different colour patterns. This is also the case in the sheet-weaving spider Oedothorax gibbosus. There are two distinct types of males: 'flat’ and 'hunched’. The flat males look more like females and mature more quickly, allowing them to be the first to fertilize females. The hunched specimens have a complex head structure with glands and sensory hairs that allow them to seduce already fertilized females: they are 'macho males’.

Evolutionary biologist Frederik Hendrickx (RBINS): “The differences between these two types of males are enormous, at least as large as between two very different species, such as a tiger and a lion. When you mix tigers and lions you obtain an intermediate form – ligers or tigons, with both lion and tiger characteristics - because the genes are mixed up like a deck of cards. But in some species, like this spider, you neatly retain the two separate types. 'How this is possible is a largely unresolved mystery within evolutionary biology. The gibbosusspiders are a great opportunity to figure out how this works genetically.’

Supergene

The researchers screened the genome and found that the hunched males have a package of genes that is missing from the flat males. The package consists of genes that you also find elsewhere in the genome. Natural selection caused those copies to lie neatly next to each other so that offspring receive them as a single package. "The genome appears to be surprisingly dynamic,” says Hendrickx. “The genes responsible for the development of these conspicuous male traits are moved or duplicated and end up grouped together, so that they are inherited as a bundle. This is a huge eye-opener.”

The bundle is called a supergene. The extra piece of genome not only explains the difference between the two types, but also why we find no intermediate forms, no half-half versions. Only the genes necessary for the development of hunched males have grouped together in this supergene. The flat males can perfectly live without them. This explains why the population breaks down into two types: either super-masculine or female-like males.

Chain Reaction

When the evolutionary biologists zoomed into the supergene, they found that one of the genes in the supergene is a copy of the doublesex gene. All animals - including us - have that gene. Doublesex is a transcription factor: it switches other genes on or off. It’s a big on-button for typical male characteristics. “If the doublesex gene is turned off in mice, the males develop something resembling ovaries,” says Hendrickx. The development of male characteristics in gibbosusspiders occurs after a chain reaction: the sex chromosomes activate that doublesex gene, which in turn turns on other genes that provide male traits, both genes that are inside and outside the supergene package. Flat males have no supergene and therefore no extra on-button doublesex. They don’t develop those extra male characteristics: no hump, no extra glands and no hair. “In most species, the development of sexual characteristics depends on much more than the sex chromosomes. It’s a cascade of genes that are switched on or off, and one link more or less can make a big difference.”

Toolbox

Still, flat males do differ markedly from females. They possess male sex organs, produce sperm and can reproduce. That is because there are five more doublesex genes in other places of the genome, which tap into basic male characteristics.

“You could think of the supergene as a toolbox: over the course of evolution, more and more genes have ended up in that toolbox. An extra doublesex gene and other genes for distinct male characteristics were added to the box because they provided a clear advantage. The spiders with the supergene develop extra male characteristics. Those that do not inherit the toolbox only develop the basic male characteristics.”

[: 1. ARABEL-image bank/Gilbert Loos; 2. RBINS]

One for the books : ‘That time when our mascotte Iggy got his glow-up’ - with the help of our technical crew. Iggy will be restored before the holidays!

Sinking seals, dolphins and whales! Palaeontologists have discovered that marine mammals developed thicker and heavier bones as an adaptation to a salty inland sea in Central Europe some 13 million years ago. Heavier bones acted as diving weights: they helped the animals to reach depths in the super-saline water in a more energy-efficient way.

Marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, developed dense and heavy bones at the very beginning of their evolution, from 50 million years ago. It helped them to dive to depths or stay in the water column more easily. But those bones became lighter in the millions of years that followed as marine mammals swam more efficiently thanks to other adaptations, such as large flippers or a tail fluke.

An international team with palaeontologists from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and the University of Liège has found a remarkable ‘return’ in that evolution around 13.8 million years ago. At that time, several marine mammals - they examined 12 fossils of true seals, toothed whales and baleen whales - independently acquired thicker, heavier bones.

Super salty sea

‘This has everything to do with the sea in which they lived at that time: the Paratethys Sea’, says palaeontologist Leonard Dewaele (RBINS, ULiège). ‘A large part of that sea in Central Europe was cut off from other seas because the water level dropped. Further evaporation caused the water level to drop even further and the water became extremely salty. You can compare it to the Dead Sea. Super salty water pushes you upwards. But that is hindering marine mammals searching for food in the deep. When we examined the bone structure of the various marine mammal fossils from that salty period of 400,000 years, we noticed that they had all developed heavier bones. With a heavier skeleton you can better resist buoyancy.’

When the water level in this part of the Paratethys Sea rose again around 13.4 million years ago and it connected again to other seas, the water became more brackish, but the adaptation of thicker bones continued for millions of years. Possibly these heavier bones helped them to forage near the seafloor. Today’s marine mammal species are not descended from the animals of the Paratethys Sea and all have - except for sea cows and for the bowhead whale - lighter bones.

The developments long ago in the Paratethys Sea can also be a mirror for today. ‘Rising sea levels in the coming decades or centuries could create inland seas or connect separate seas,’ says Dewaele. 'Our research illustrates how small geographical changes can have an impact on ecology and the evolution of fauna.’

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Listen to the smell of insects! Researchers have translated odours emitted by insects to defend themselves against predators into sounds.

‘We sent the volatiles via an algorithm to a synthesizer and then tested the sounds on volunteers,’ says entomologist Jean-Luc Boevé (@rbins). 'People reacted to the sounds just as strongly or weakly as the predators to the smells.’

[Hear for yourself]

Chemical signals play a crucial role in the insect world, including as a defence weapon. Take the larvae of sawflies. They are often attacked by ants . The larvae try to keep them at bay by emitting a cocktail of chemical substances that the ants cannot tolerate. Many insect species have similar defence tactics. But how do you measure the effect of that smell on the predator?

There are tests in which ants can perceive substances separately or in a mixture, and their response is measured. But that can be difficult: you need to find sometimes rare insect species in the field and/or rear them in the lab.

Enter: sonification. If you know from a prey insect the chemical substances and their concentrations, you can convert them into sounds . ‘Take a small molecule, such as acetic acid, that evaporates very quickly,’ says Boevé. ‘We gave it a high tone, larger molecules a lower one. Other characteristics influenced the duration, the timbre and volume.’

Boevé and informatics engineer Rudi Giot measured how far the volunteers were walking away from the speakers. Some subjects described certain sounds as unpleasant and frightening. Some sounds would indeed fit in the soundtrack of a horror movie . Boevé: 'To our surprise, the tests showed that the humans reacted against the sounds as the ants did against the odours.’

Nice black-and-white pictures of our trilobites by visitor Jean-Loup Dabe. You can find them in our Gallery of Evolution, in the first part of the hall. Trilobites are one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods (animals with a head, body and tail) and they stand among the most successful creatures in the history of our planet.

The first traces of these three-lobed animals are found in rocks of the Early Cambrian period, some 521 million years ago. They swam our oceans for about 300 million years! What a survivors… Exactly what caused the extinction of trilobites isn’t known, but it’s likely due to a combination of factors including environmental changes. It’s thought their populations may have been in decline for some time before a mass extinction event around 252 million years ago - the Permian-Triassic extinction - wiped them out.

They flourished to over 600 species at their zenith, with a huge variety in length – from 3mm to 72cm – of elaborate forms – some had multi-faceted eyes sitting atop towering stalks – and unique feeding strategies – some of them predatory, some of them squeezing the nutrients from mud, and some of them free-swimming.

The species in the picture is Ellipsocephalus hoffi. This species was blind and lived in deep, poorly lit habitats. It’s a common trilobite mainly from central Europe.

@amnhnyc has made a marvelous website dedicated to the terrific trilobites.

[Pictures:@jeanloupmhd, Instragram]

Visitor@loudossogne face to facemask with our cast of T. rex ‘Stan’ in the Dinosaur Gallery.

We’re pretty sure our T. rex cast is the most photographed and ‘selfied’ specimen in the Museum. It has become quite the symbol of dinosaurs as a group, and maybe that’s a pity, because it’s overshadowing an incredible variety of amazing other dinosaur species. What is your favourite one?

But hey, Tyrannosaurus rex IS a spectacular and terrifying predator. T. rex lived 69 to 66 million years ago, at the very end of the Late Cretaceous. It had 50 to 60 teeth as big as bananas. They are serrated - just like a steak knife - excellent for piercing the flesh of their prey and ripping off chunks of meat…The teeth were replaced throughout their lives.

In a recent study @naturalismuseum claims that T. rex probably walked more slowly than previously assumed, as shown by a 3D model that simulated the walk of T. rex ‘Trix’. She walked at 4.6 kilometres per hour - which is about the same speed as you! To prevent injuries, the living animal likely kept a relaxed gait. But as the authors note, this was not the maximal speed, but the animal’s preferred walking speed.

Stay tuned for more T. rex mania this autumn! ;)

[picture: @loudossogne]

Nice picture by visitor @faye.pieters in our Gallery of Evolution!

In the background you can see two skeletons of whale ancestors hanging from the ceiling. Whales evolved over some 50 million years from small four-limbed and hoofed land-dwelling mammals to fully-aquatic baleen and toothed whales.

On the right is Maiacetus, that lived some 47 million years ago. It still has four legs and was amphibious: so it could swim, but also walk on land. And to the left of it is Dorudon, which hind legs are already extremely reduced, so it was already fully aquatic some 40 million years ago. Whale evolution is just one stunning science story to tell!

Want to know more? Watch our YT video in which our fossil whale specialist Olivier Lambert explains an important find in Peru illuminating whale evolution and dispersal some 43 million years ago – so in between Maiacetus and Dorudon.

[picture:@faye.pieters]

Visitor Aicha Sefiaa and friends having a great time in our gallery Living Planet.

Living Planet represents more than 850 specimens displayed on 2,000 m2 (from the blue whale to the smallest insects ), with 3D models, visual media, audio interviews and interactive, recreational and educational animations.

The Earth is swarming with life and you can rediscover it through an aesthetic, family-friendly and scientific ️ approach to biodiversity

The upper floor of the gallery explains the abundance of species and habitats. The lower floor of Living Planet deals with the complex relationships these species have with one another and with their environment. Each species plays an important role and has its place in this web of life. ♻️

The gallery also explain our planet’s resilience to perturbations. But if they are too frequent and too heavy – as is the case in this climate and biodiversity crisis caused by humans – species disappear, food chains collapse and earth’s diversity declines.

Explore the gallery in a marvelous ‘streetview’:

Explore Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen - Brussel in 3D

Oh, and we just created new discovery areas for 6- to 12-year-olds in the gallery: Tetrapodium and Arthropodium. Animals with 4 legs and animals with 6 or more will no longer have any secrets! Through play and by observing them closely you discover their bodies, their way of life and their interactions. The two new areas make your visit to Living Planet complete!

[Picture:@aicha_sefiaa]

Very proud of our Gallery of Humankind, our showroom of human life: you can explore our 7 million years of human past and - as you see here - the human body. Studio Louter made these beautiful projections.

This zone openly and honestly explores different life stages, from the embryo to adulthood: fertilisation, pregnancy, birth and the first weeks of life, a child’s rapid growth, the changes that take place during adolescence (to the brain and future reproductive functions) and old age.

[images and videos: @studio_louter]

We love the composition of this by visitor @mrdieds. This is our Gallery of Evolution.

You will travel through 541 million years of evolution of life on this planet, stopping off at six key moments: the Cambrian explosion, the proliferation of aquatic life during the Devonian era, the conquest of land during the Carboniferous period, the swarming seas of the Jurassic era, the appearance of mammals in the Eocene period, and - as you see here - the impact of humans in the present day.

Evolution is of course not limited to the past: species continue to change. Today, human beings are having an undeniable impact on life on our planet. Artificial selection, genetic modifications, overfishing, selective hunting, the destruction of ecosystems, and the introduction of exotic species are all human factors that are causing important changes and even the extinction of many species.

Want a quick 360° drone flight through life’s evolution?

[picture:@mrdieds]

Picture of our facade by a chimney sweep (!), who was working across the street!

Do you know what is hiding behind our brown facade? The whole world! Shielded from sunlight and heat, you will find a great part our natural sciences collections there. One of the largest in Europe: 38 million specimens, from the four corners of the world. Each and every one of them bears witness to what lives, may soon no longer live, and what once has lived.

So imagine storage rooms with rows of oak cupboards crammed with carefully described insects, rooms with shelves full of invertebrates preserved in alcohol, drawers with vertebrates, and anthropological collections including Neanderthals found in Belgium… And of course we also have fossil collections - from trilobites to dinosaurs - and geological collections, with minerals and meteorites.

These collections are the result of many decades of exploration and research, and help us better understand the history of life on Earth, and to come up with better ways of protecting the biodiversity and geological diversity today. With modern technology (DNA analysis, imaging techniques, …) scientists are making new discoveries about this natural heritage.

Check out (a small part) of our collections in high res on virtualcollections.naturalsciences.be

[picture: @rooftopvermandel, Instragram]