Dinosaurs Unlimited

The dinosaurs on display at the Senckenberg Museum did not all live at the same time. The age of the dinosaurs – the earth’s middle era – is divided into three sections: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Our exhibition’s oldest, and sole, representative of the Trias is the Plateosaurus.

Dating from the era that followed – the Jurassic period – are the huge herbivorous sauropods such as the imposing long-necked Diplodocus in the centre of the dinosaur room. Yet some of these giants could get to be even bigger, as shown by our Supersaurus leg. These four-legged titans lived some 150 million years ago. The youngest period in the earth’s middle age – Cretaceous – is characterized by the enormous diversity of the dinosaur species. It was at this time, for example that the legendary Tyrannosaurus rex and our museum’s own “heraldic” symbol, the three-horned dinosaur Triceratops, roamed the earth.  

The avian dinosaurs on display also date back to the Cretaceous period, which ended more than 66 million years ago with a mass extinction of species.