A Living past

Qatar’s Natural History Collection is a treasure beyond price; it is a unique gift to our future generations-the gift of being able to learn from the relics of ancient life, gaining insights into the history of our planet.

Fossils are remains of plants and animals that existed, millions of years ago. By studying fossils we were able to enhance our knowledge about the life in the past, how the creatures lived and how the environment has changed through geological time.
Large numbers of species appeared and disappeared over a span of many million years and the process of disappearance continued due to sudden and mass extinction. Dinosaurs became extinct as a result of a meteorite impact 64 million years ago.

 

Dinosauria from the Greek words deinos meaning ‘fearfully great’ and sauros meaning ‘lizard’.
Awesome Reptiles
Through the ages, discoveries of unusually large teeth and bones buried in the ground led to all kinds of myths and legends about giants, dragons, or even of creatures turned to stone.
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Fossils
How did those creatures become fossils? When bones are buried by silt and mud, minerals seep into bones, hardening them in a process known as permineralisation.
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When did they exist?
Dinosaurs appeared on the scene at the end of the Triassic period, some tome after the Permo- Triassic mass extinctions that marked the end of the Paleozoic era about 250 MYA ( Millions of Years Ago)
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Rocks & Minerals
The Natural History department owns a unique collection of some of the rarest and most important rocks and minerals in the world, which vary in shapes, sizes, colors and origins. From a large piece of meteorite from Arizona, ...
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