Naturmuseum, Stuttgart

On the advice of the Stuttgart information center (we said we were looking for an attraction that is (1) kid-friendly and (2) indoor), we took the train to one of the natural history museums, the one filled with dinosaurs! It's the Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde Stuttgart or Stuttgart State Museum for Natural History. Luckily, it wasn't even far from the train stop, maybe two blocks. The outside had some fine examples of local pre-historic citizens.

Tall, ribby dinosaur!

Would be tall if he stood up straight!

We went in, paid our admissions, and began to wander around. One challenge with this museum is that most all the signs are in German. Hardly any English was anywhere, which made it easy not to be worried about all the information I was missing as the children dragged me through the exhibits.

The museum has an open layout, allowing for plenty of exhibits and tall dinosaur replicas or skeletons.

Dino replicas

Dino skeleton

Upstairs we saw some exhibits on water-dwelling dinosaurs, which made L a little nervous.

Not so little swimmers

Crocodile/alligator ancestor?

L, what's that behind you!

Swamp/bamboo dweller

Downstairs the museum had some crafts for the children and some samples of what dino hunting is like.

L tries out the dig for dino detritus

One room was guarded by an intimidating head poking through the wall. The kids weren't worried, probably because they are short enough not to be grabbed by his jaws.

Heeeere's Dino!

He was guarding an exhibit on how dinosaurs are now thought to be predecessors of birds more so than lizards. They displayed several examples. I wished I knew German so I could read more about this change of theory.

This little chicken dino is compsognathus longipes.

Comsognathus lonipes with feathers

Next to him is archaeopteryx lithographica, another fine feathered friend.

Archaeopteryx

An interesting exhibit is the deinonychus antirrhopus, shown as a feathered and as a non-feathered animal.

Which one is right?

They also had a large skeleton on display.

Feathers and skeleton

Later on, L was excited to spot an elephant dinosaur. This mammoth skeleton is Sussbrackwasser-molasse, or brackish-water molasse.

Big brute

L was excited to see this

Other side of the skeleton

Up above is a skeleton of the more famous woolly mammoth, sans wool.

Wooly mammoth sans flesh too!

Nearby, J saw an old horse-ancestor skeleton that he like.

Horse and J

We had a good visit even if we couldn't read anything. The outdoors had more dinos but since the weather was so cold we just headed back to the train.