Ashoro Museum of Paleontology 足寄動物化石博物館
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On the way from Ikeda station (池田駅前) to Ashoro station by Tokachi Bus on 6th June 2024, I got off at the bus-stop Ashoro Museum of Paleontology (足寄動物化石#博物館) in order to visit the museum.
I have not studied paleontology, which, however, has somehow interested my elder daughter, and I used to take her to various exhibitions, which inevitably influenced me.
Before talking about the museum, the location of Ashoro Town in Hokkaidō is depicted below:
As the map tells, it is a large town, and as a matter of fact, it is the largest town in Japan, and the second largest municipality next to Takayama City, Gifu Prefecture (岐阜県高山市).
It is a small museum in a small town, but I found the exhibition of reconstructed skeletal specimens of mainly extinct aquatic herbivorous mammal genera neatly organized, and very informative at least to me.
Being a layman in this area, let me just show photos taken in the museum.
Ashoroa is an extinct genus of desmostylian, aquatic, herbivorous mammal.
Desmostylus is an extinct genus of herbivorous mammal of the family Desmostylidae.
Behemotops is an extinct genus of herbivorous marine mammal.
Paleoparadoxia is a genus of large, herbivorous aquatic mammals.
Desmostylus and Paleoparadoxia were on the website of the Mizunami Fossil Museum (瑞浪市化石博物館) in Mizunami City, Gifu Prefecture (岐阜県瑞浪市), so I knew their names. It is clear that the name Paleoparadoxia indicates that there was something controversial upon its discovery...
https://www.city.mizunami.lg.jp/kankou_bunka/1004960/kaseki_museum/index.html
The home page of Mizunami Fossil Museum shows the following photo:
In addition to exhibition of reconstructed fossils, the following exhibition was very enlightening:
https://x.com/SokoKhazar/status/1799422152569237709
Since I was highly pleased with the exhibition, I bought the following book:
It's a small museum in a small town, and maintaining such a museum is deemed to be extremely challenging, especially under abominable tendency to obliterate precious materials in various local museums owing to m0r0n1c politicians, I fully respect tremendous effort of the museum curators in this country.
Last but not least, I am thankful to 美原さつき様 whose highly informative posts have enlightened me🙏
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