Senckenberg

Dinosaurs star at Frankfurt’s natural history museum

Story and photos by David Ruderman

104th Area Support Group Public Affairs Office

Follow the yellow brick road to Frankfurt’s Naturmuseum Senckenberg one weekend and you’ll quickly realize you’re not in Kansas anymore. The three-story natural history museum is home to lions, tigers and bears — oh my — not to mention mastodons, anacondas and quaggas.

While it’s a classic rainy day retreat for families with young children, there’s a wealth of attractions for visitors of all ages at the Senckenberg that trace the entire history of life on Earth and the planet’s place in the cosmos. If it’s been a part of the saga of evolution, you’ll find it represented here, along with its near and distant cousins, often in a reconstructed version of the appropriate habitat.

An outgrowth of the Senckenberg Natural History Research Society, founded in 1817, the museum is dedicated to promoting scientific understanding and bringing its insights to the public. Exhibits present knowledge in context.

The stars of the show, and the big draw for younger visitors, are the dinosaurs. For those inclined to meet the monsters at close range, the Senckenberg doesn’t disappoint. The exhibits reopened last November after undergoing renovations that present the outsize masters of the Mesozoic in brighter lights. The main ground floor exhibit space shows them off to their best advantage, but the Senckenberg has lots more to offer too.

Whether it’s crustaceans in their crunchy glory or spiders in their silky splendor, the range of exhibits is extensive and enormously educational for those with an interest in the natural sciences.

Ambiguous about amphibians?

Are you ambiguous about amphibians? Check out the recreations of the Japanese giant salamander and the West African Goliath frog, then move on to the newts and toads.

If fish is your dish you can find exhibits of the jawless, cartilaginous and bony varieties. Visitors can have a good look, for instance, at the rare lobe-fin fish, Latimeria chalumnae, a species first discovered by researchers in 1938. The lobe-fin is known to exist in nature only in small areas off the east coast of Africa and in Indonesia.

A total of no more than 300 specimens have ever been seen by human eyes. Ancestors of this aquatic rarity dating back to the Devonian period — long before you were in high school — are considered to be evolutionarily significant as predecessors of terrestrial vertebrates, the life forms that crawled out of the sea and found eventually that they could stand up because they had a little bit of backbone going for them.

The museum displays about 800 species of birds. In the large mammals department visitors can get the lowdown on the lives of elephants, mastodons and whales. It’s a naturalist’s delight as well as a wonderful research resource and well of dreams for budding scientists of all ages.

Children in particular will enjoy the large number of exhibits that allow them to touch and otherwise interact with the reconstructed life forms.

The Senckenberg is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Children under 6 enter at no cost. Children age 6-15 pay €2.50, youths and adults 16-65 pay €5 and those over 65 pay €4.

The museum is located at Senckenberganlage 25, about a 10-minute walk from the Frankfurt main train station, though the trek will be longer with young children in tow. Take the U-4 from the train station to the Bockenheimer Warte subway stop. The children will enjoy the escalator ride and you won’t have to waste time and money on parking. The U-6 and U-7 also stop there.

For information on guided tours, classes and workshops call civ (069) 7542 357.

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