Dinosaurs in Berlin

["Unwin, Dr D.M." <dmu1@leicester.ac.uk>]

Reopening of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

On Friday 13th July the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin reopened several galleries 
after more than two years of refurbishment.

The star of the show is the new Dinosaur Hall which features a stunning remount 
of Brachiosaurus and several
other Tendaguru dinos in new poses, all done by Research Casting under the 
expert eye of Christian Remes (so if you have any comments email him, not me!). 
At the back of the hall, in its own high security room, the Berlin 
Archaeopteryx has also
gone on display for the first time (as far as I know).

The opening event featured performing pterosaurs (sounds tacky, but proved to 
be wonderful) and visitor numbers for the first 
two days topped 22,000 (compare this to about 250,000 for a typical  year). In 
fact, there were so many visitors the queue trailed all the way back down the 
steet as far as the U-Bahn station, which had to be temorarily closed at one 
point because there were just too many people arriving in the station and 
hoping to get to the museum. 

So, if you want to see some great dinosaurs and lots of other stuff including a 
pterosaur with the pteroid articulated with the medial carpal (yes, really), 
come to Berlin. 

Cheers,

Dave 

_____________________________________________________________________
David M. Unwin
Department of Museum Studies
University of Leicester
105 Princess Road East
LEICESTER LE1 7LG
UK
Email:     dmu1@le.ac.uk  
Work tel: +44 116 252 3947
Dept tel:  +44 116 252 3963
Fax:        +44 116 252 3960
http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/contactus/davidunwin.html

Live in Europe and interested in visiting major European natural history 
collections?
Go to: www.synthesys.info

Would you like to catch up on the latest ideas about pterodactyls?
Read: The Pterosaurs
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780131463080,00.html
______________________________________________________________________