Sintra Natural History Museum, Natural history museum in Sintra, Portugal
The Museu de História Natural is a natural history museum in the town center of Sintra housed within a nineteenth-century building. It displays over ten thousand fossils, nine hundred minerals, and more than one thousand shells and mollusks from worldwide sources.
The museum opened in 2009 and houses collections built by Miguel Barbosa and Fernanda Barbosa across five decades of gathering specimens from around the world. Their long work of collecting created the foundation for this institution to tell Earth's geological story.
The museum traces how Earth's rocks and life forms changed over billions of years, showing visitors specimens that tell the story of our planet's long journey.
The museum is located on Rua do Paço in the town center and is easy to reach on foot. Entry is free, and visiting on weekday mornings tends to offer a quieter experience with fewer crowds.
The museum houses the only complete specimen of Braseodactylus, a flying reptile from Brazil's Chapada do Araripe formation. This rare fossil makes the place special for anyone interested in prehistoric flying creatures and their history.
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