Civico Museo di Storia Naturale di Trieste

Founded in 1846, Trieste's Civic Museum of Natural History holds collections in botany, zoology, mineralogy, geology and palaeontology. Its best-known objects include dinosaur fossils from Villaggio del Pescatore, a preserved great white shark called Carlotta and the remains known as the Lonche Man.

Why it matters

The museum is the oldest scientific institution in Friuli Venezia Giulia and has grown into a collection of roughly four million specimens. Its displays connect discoveries from the Karst and Adriatic region with natural history on a wider scale. The museum identifies the Villaggio del Pescatore quarry as Italy's only dinosaur site and presents its Tethyshadros insularis skeletons, Antonio and Bruno, as the largest and most complete Italian dinosaurs found to date. It describes the Lonche Man, about 6,500 years old, as preserving the earliest known dental filling.

What to notice

The palaeontology collections include the Tethyshadros skeletons, a fossil of the pregnant marine reptile known as Carsosauro, an adriosaur and the flat-toothed crocodile Acinodonte. Cave-bear skeletons and remains of other animals record the Karst's prehistoric fauna. The zoological holdings range from whale skeletons and Adriatic seals to insects and birds; Carlotta, the preserved great white shark, measures 5.4 metres. Other displays include the Wunderkammer, human-evolution material and a reconstruction of a Karst cave environment.

Context and history

The Comune di Trieste founded and continues to run the museum as part of its civic scientific museums. Over time, curators assembled around thirty herbaria alongside zoological collections from many parts of the world. The museum moved to its present building on Via dei Tominz, where the height of the exhibition spaces accommodates large skeletons. Its collections and research have contributed to the study of the Karst and Istrian prehistory.