1. The most spectacular fossil found in Norway

The exhibited specimen of Mixopterus kiari is around 420 million years old and comes from the Silurian rocks of Ringerike, north-west of Oslo. The rectangular head shows a variety of appendages modified for grasping, mating, walking and swimming. The long pointed tail of Mixopterus might have been curled over the back of the animal and used for piercing prey, such as fish, held between the grasping appendages. This 75 cm long sea scorpion was found by Professor Johan Kiær in 1909.

Jewels of science and beautiful gems

4. Opalised belemnite

This beautiful gem is a cast of the hollow left by a dissolved guard of a belemnite. Belemnites are an extinct group of marine cephalopods, very similar in many ways to the modern squid. This belemnite lived about 115 million years ago and was found in Coober Pedy, South Australia.

5. Ammonite

Ammonites are an extinct group of cephalopod molluscs with an external chambered shell. The colour present in this ammonite is caused by light interference in the mother of pearl during refraction into the many layers. This specimen, Placenticeras meeki from Alberta, Canada, lived ca 70 million years ago.

2. A living fossil?

The crossopterygians are an important group of lobefinned fish because amphibians probably from groups related to them. During the Devonian two separate branches of crossopterygians evolved: one led to the amphibians, while the other invaded the sea. The crossopterygians which invaded the sea, called the coelacanths,were thought to have become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, but in 1938, a fisherman caught a coelacanth off Madagascar. Since then dozens more have been caught both there and in Indonesia. This exceptional specimen is from the Jurassic rocks of Solnhofen in Germany – 150 million years old.

3. Megistaspis – Norway's largest trilobite

The largest complete trilobite so far collected in Norway is 30 centimetres long and is from Vikersund. Finds of individual tails indicate that this species could reach a size of at least 40 cm. This extinct arthropod walked the sea floor in the Ordovician, some 470 million years ago when Norway was situated ca 40° S of the Equator.

6. A hedgehog without spines!
 

Macrocranion tupaiodon was one of the many small mammals that lived 47 million years ago near the Messel lake in today's Germany. This fossil is so well preserved that stomach contents and the fur outline are visible. Its teeth indicate that this animal was an insectivore and seems to have been particularly fond of insects. It is related to the hedgehogs despite its long hind legs and lack of spines.

7. Plateosaurus – the world's deepest dinosaur

The somewhat rough uncovering of Norway's first dinosaur happened in the North Sea, at an incredible 2256 metres below the seabed. The fossil is in fact a slightly crushed long bone found in a drill core. Norway's first dinosaur fossil is a Plateosaurus, a species that could be up to nine metres long and weigh up to four tons. It lived in the dry landscape between Norway and Greenland 215 to 200 million years ago. Plateosaurus at the end of the Triassic period, 215 to 200 million years ago.