If you go into central Lausanne, Switzerland, you’re likely to pass the Palais du Remine, and if you do, I recommend you go inside. I was happy I did while visiting Lausanne for the AMAM2019 conference. A luxurious palace has been given over to house five (!) free (!) museums on science and culture. These include the canton’s (~state’s) museums of palaeontology and zoology, which I’ll showcase here (also a little of geology and archaeology museums). Tripadvisor’s reviews were good but not as glowing as I’d make mine, so I will remedy that. I’m a sucka for old-school museums, and that’s what these are. So if that sounds right for you, journey onward!
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It’s nice.
As you may be expecting by now if you’ve been here before, it’s time for another museum photo blog!
Stomach-Churning Rating: 5/10 for bones, preserved organs, taxidermy aplenty, and animal developmental deformities.
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Nice cathedral nearby, w/great view of the city.
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Nice interior architecture. There’s lots of nice to behold.
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Posters That Get You Excited 101. But you must wait. Like I did.
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Quadrupedal human at Zoology museum entry.
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Tomistoma, false gharial.
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Not a bad collection of taxidermied Crocodylia!
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Visually arresting cobra display.
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I’ve never seen three Draco gliding lizards on display together!
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Bipedal lizard taxidermy displays, freezing the dynamic in the static, are no easy feat.
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Plenty of stuffed animals like these raptors/other large birds. Classical zoology museum style. Minimal signage. Just specimen labels, mainly.
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Coelacanth!
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Sperm whale jaw.
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Open space with big specimens. A ~4m long great white shark included.
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Second zoology hall: bones!
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Gorilla standing tall next to human.
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Ostrich skeleton up close, amongst the mammalz.
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Cassowary skeleton.
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Emu shoulder/arm bones in right side view.
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Walrus skeleton in what seems like an odd pose to me, but then they are odd on land.
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Alligator skeleton in repose.
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Giant anteater, “knuckle-walking”.
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Pangolin skeleton! And mounted digging into a nest– very well done!
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Bernard Heuvelmans display, about the (in)famous cryptozoologist. This was quite a surprise to me. I’m sure I’d read his English-translated book “On the Track of Unknown Animals” as a kid, during my long stint as an avid reader of much zoology, crypto- and otherwise. He bequeathed a lot of his work to the museum.
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Bernard’s handwritten CV!? With a “sea serpent” sketch.
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A “sea serpent” vertebra… but if you know any anatomy, it’s not a snake’s vertebra at all but a fish’s, such as a basking shark‘s.
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Are you ready for more weirdness? How about some “mutants”- congenital deformities of animals? Fascinating errors of developmental anatomy… somehow this two-headed calf survived awhile. Plenty more where that came from, as follows:
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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And then there’s all kinds of wonderful comparative anatomy. To be a student of this subject in Lausanne would be a lucky thing, with this museum’s collection at hand. These are valuable specimens, made with love and skill.
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Fish head anatomy. Some vertebrae on the left, too.
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Developmental regions of the head: a lovely wax(?) model of an Echidna skull. A treasure.
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Brains: alligator vs. pigeon.
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Salamander muscles.
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Pigeon muscles.
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More spotted felids than you can shake a jar of catnip at.
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Another pangolin!
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Giant armadillo.
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Petaurus: flying phalanger (a gliding marsupial).
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Second zoology hall open area: left side.
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Second zoology hall open area: right side.
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A final hall with a more new-fangled display, on the topic of evolution and extinction. Attractive phylogeny graphic here. Birds at the “top”, of course. Poor lowly mammals!
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Taxidermied giant auk- not a common sight! (Extinct)
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The extinct southern pig-footed bandicoot. Also a rare sight of a whole specimen- in a Swiss museum, too.
NOW ON TO THE FOSSILS!
You’ve been very patient. Here, have a Toblerone.
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Palaeo museum entry. Already there are cool things visible. Inside, we find it just like I prefer my zoo/palaeo museums (as above): stuffed with specimens and leaving plenty for you to wonder about and investigate. Not frilly; a well-stocked museum that mostly lets its specimens speak for themselves.
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Sauriermuseum (Aathal) specimen of Plateosaurus: sculpt/cast. A very good, big skeleton of this common dinosaur, rearing up.
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Rear view of same.
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Real bones of same; vertebrae and pelvic (this is the “Frick specimen”).
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Metaxytherium (current name), an ancient and large fossil dugong/seacow. Skull is in left side view. (that may help, as their skulls are odd!)
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Anthracotherium upper jaw: ancient hippo-cousin.
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Prolagus: the “Sardinian hare” (recently extinct; old lineage).
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Potamotherium: to some an early otter-like mammal, more recently thought to be an ancient seal.
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“Broke-ulum”: a walrus broke its penis bone (baculum) and was surely not pleased about it, but lived to heal— physically if not mentally. Yeesh!
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Glyptodont tail club and armour.
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Aepyornis elephant bird legs!
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A partial/reconstructed skeleton of the dodo.
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Velociraptor preparing to pounce from above. It’s too late for you!
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Rhamphorhynchus fossil (2D slab) and sculpt/cast coming alive in 3D– good stuff.
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Anhanguera pterosaur watches the chaos from above, fish snagged in its teeth.
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Not-shabby metriorhynchid marine croc fossils, from Britain.
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Lovely 3D plesiosaur bones (flippers, neck, etc.) from near RVC: Peterborough!
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Mesosaur; early reptile.
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The museum clearly is proud of its excellent “Mammoth of Brassus” skeleton, essentially complete.
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Ice Age elk/moose, a 10,000 year old skeleton in fine shape.
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Cave bear skull rawr
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Purty ammonites!
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Spiky ammonite!
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Cretaceous sponge colony from France. I hadn’t seen something like this before, so here it is.
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Trilobites, brittlestars and friends.
Well I did wander through the geology and archaeology museums too, and while I liked them I did not take so many photos. My non-human organismal bias is apparent. But check these final ones out:
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Splendid cross-section of the stratigraphy of the Alps around Lausanne. I gazed at this for quite a few minutes, trying to figure out what was where in the landscape I’d seen and how old, how deformed, etc.
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Slab of “dinosaur” tracks but it was not clear to me what dinosaurs/archosaurs/whatever made them. I wish my French was better. Closeup below shows two footprints superimposed.
Image may be NSFW.
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At last, the coup de grace! What museum would be complete without a diorama!? (I love them) This one, with a goat sacrifice and early Stone Age people praying to heathen deities/spirits at an elaborate petroglyph array rocked my world. And so it makes a perfect final image. Enjoy, and conduct the proper rites. \m/