Dinosaur skeletons at the museum in Paris

Last week I wrote about visiting the Galerie de paléontologie et d'anatomie comparée in Paris. There was so much to write about that I only wrote about what was in the bottom hall, which was bones and skeletons from animals that still exist. This week I am going to write about the top hall, which is full of dinosaur skeletons and other animals which are extinct.

The top hall isn't quite as packed as the other hall, but it still had masses of skeletons in, and some of them were absolutely huge.

This animal was Megatherium Americanum and it is one of the biggest land animals ever known. It looks like a huge bear but it's actually a type of ground sloth !

This armadillo was the size and weight of a car ! It is called Glyptodon Asper.

This is a diplodocus, called Diplodocus Carnegii. It has 80 bones just in its tail !

This is a type of mammoth called Mammoth Meridien but I can't find out anything about it so maybe I got the name wrong Mammuthus meridionalis (thanks tai !)

This looks similar but it comes from a different family because it's called archaeobelodon filholi. It has a really strange shaped jaw.

This is a smilodon populator, or sabre-toothed cat. It's sometimes called a sabre-toothed tiger, but it's not actually a tiger. It has massive teeth but they're actually quite fragile, and they wouldn't be much use in a fight.

This display case was full of lions, hyenas, bears and other animals.

This is a lion extinct cave bear (ursus spelaeus) and it has something I'd never seen before on its skeleton. (Thanks to Julie Wood for emailing me to say I got it wrong)

They had put its baculum or penis bone ! Some animals have them, and some don't. Humans don't.

This is a hyaena crocuta which is a laughing hyena. It has massive teeth and a massive saggital crest.

This is the biggest skull any type of land animal has ever had. It's easy to spot because it's a triceratops  which means "three spikes".

This is a sarcosuchus imperator which is an early type of gharial, which is a type of crocodile.

This is a plesiosaurus which is a reptile which lives mostly in the sea but could come on land too. It was a carnivore.

This looks a bit like a Tyrannosaurus Rex but it's actually a allosaurus fragilis which means "different lizard". It doesn't look as scary as a T-rex, but it was a predator too.

This was the Tyrannosaurus Rex skull. Tyrannosaurus Rex means "tyrant lizard king".

This is a pareiasaurus, which is a reptile which walked on huge fat legs.

There were lots of dinosaurs that were supposed be a bit like rhinos. This is one of them, and it's called dinoceras mirabile or sometimes Uintatherium which means "Beast of the Uinta Mountains".

This is a close up of its really strange skull.

This one is similar to a rhino too. It's called rhinoceros tichorhinus and you can see its horn in the glass case.

Here's another dinosaur that was like a crocodile. It was called steneosaurus heberti.

This is a kind of wolf called canis dirus or the Dire Wolf.

This is halitherium schinzii which is also called a sea cow. I didn't know it at the time, but if you look hard enough you can see the remains of back legs for when it used to walk, not swim. (A bit like how humans have tiny tails from when they used to be monkeys.)

This is one of my favourite skulls on the top floor. It's called arsinotherium zitteli and was another animal that was a lot like a rhino. It looks absolutely amazing !

We spent hours at the museum, then afterwards we went to the zoo next door. Next week I'm going write about what I saw there !

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