One of the best
things we did soon after arriving in Oviedo was spend an afternoon at MUJA, the
Museum of Jurassic Asturias. We had rented a car for our first week so that we could do errands more easily and buy any big things we
needed (a TV, for example). We also made a couple of sightseeing trips,
including MUJA.
We had no idea, but
Asturias is one of the richest areas in the world for dinosaur
footprints! Just the thing Amherst College professor Edward Hitchcock
studied in the mid-nineteenth century from examples in the
Connecticut River Valley (see the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College). At MUJA, he is duly noted on a paleontologist wall
of fame!
The museum is
located near a seaside site with dinosaur footprints (Playa de La
Griega). The clearest prints were of a large, herbivore sauropod.
The actual beach with footprints
An information sign with footprints marked
The museum itself is
perched atop a cliff, overlooking the beach. It is a gorgeous
setting. We were there near sunset, which made it even more dramatic.
The grounds feature several life-sized recreations of dinosaurs –
seemingly prowling the Asturian landscape.
Jurassic Asturias
Under attack
The museum has a striking,
tri-lobed shape, meant to mirror a three-toed footprint of a
theropod. Inside the museum, the first lobe covers the Triassic
period, the middle deals with the all-important Jurassic age, and the
last with the Cretaceous.
The tri-lobed museum at dusk
A huge dinosaur
skeleton dominates the center area of each lobe (although they are replicas). In the Cretaceous lobe, quite amazingly, two dinosaurs are
shown in what the brochure delicately calls “a courtship ritual,”
in other words, tyrannosaurus rex sex! I don’t think that is
something that you would see in the United States.
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