Naturalis

Last February, I made a quick visit to the Naturalis Biodiversity Centrer in Leiden (Netherlands). It is a national museum of natural history that houses a research center on biodiversity and it was named the European Museum of the Year 2021. Although the current name and organization of Naturalis are relatively recent, its history dates back to the early 1800s. The collection holds around 42 million specimens, making it one of the largest natural history collections globally.

In addition to having a building dedicated to researchers, equipped with a wide range of state-of-the-art scientific instruments, Naturalis also has a separate building specifically designed to house all its collections. This building spans about 19 floors, and the lagomorph collections I visited were located on the 16th floor. The collections were very well organized, and it was a real pleasure to see all the recovered material firsthand. Among the various storage units, I was finally able to locate the fossils of Prolagus apricenicus and Prolagus imperialis. These two lagomorphs once lived on the paleoisland of Gargano in Italy during the Late Miocene. The Gargano lagomorph collection was impressive due to the large amount of material and the excellent preservation of the specimens. In addition to taking measurements and photographs, we also used a light scanner to digitize the fossils and obtain a 3D copy for further analysis.

Figure 1. Femora of P. apricenicus housed a the Naturalis facilities. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED. B. Moncunill-Solé.

In addition to visiting the collections, we also toured the 9-story natural history museum. It is a very visual museum that begins with a journey through the planet's biodiversity, from the sea to continental ecosystems. Among the exhibits were large carnivores, fish, birds, elephants, and more. What particularly caught my attention was the display of a tenrec. Afterward, we entered the paleontology section, which included dinosaur and other reptile fossils, as well as Pleistocene fauna (mammoths, deer, etc.), and even the human lineage. On the top floor of the museum, we enjoyed a room dedicated to a herd of Triceratops, and two more rooms that explore the organisms mating and death. It’s an interactive museum that I highly recommend. The various floors also feature workshops about the preparation of materials for the museum, conservation processes, and more. If you visit Leiden, you can't miss it.

Figure 2. Mammoth exhibited at the Naturalis museum. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED. B. Moncunill-Solé.