Paléospace l'Odyssée, Natural history museum in Villers-sur-Mer, France.
Paléospace l'Odyssée is a natural history museum in Villers-sur-Mer, Calvados, opened on 20 April 2011. Its 1,000 m² building includes 450 m² of exhibition space, with a dark wood-slat facade, a flat roof with metal railing, and a glass entrance under a white canopy marked "PALEOSPACE". Inside are fossils from the Vaches Noires cliffs, a 5.5 m planetarium dome, and a 10 m Liopleurodon skeleton.
The museum emerged from the work of researchers who collected fossils from the nearby sea cliffs beginning in the 1970s. This initiative grew into an organized institution dedicated to preserving specimens from the Jurassic period.
The museum's name combines "paléo" for palaeontology with "espace", and its subtitle l'Odyssée refers to the journey through time it traces. Its collections grew from 200 years of fossil collecting at the Vaches Noires cliffs, and temporary exhibitions have covered topics such as dinosaur eggs, mammoths and sharks.
The museum features exhibition spaces where visitors can view fossils displayed in cases and along the walls. A planetarium is also available, allowing visitors to explore both paleontology and astronomy during a single visit.
The location sits precisely on the Prime Meridian, the line that divides Earth into eastern and western hemispheres. Visitors can stand at a point of fundamental geographic importance while viewing ancient marine fossils.
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