In the new special exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart, visitors will now encounter wondrous animals from the Triassic period.
The pavement-toothed lizard can be distinguished by its flat shell, heart-shaped head and large teeth Cyamode recognize at first glance. It lived around 244 million years ago and grazed the sea floor for hard-shelled sea creatures in order to crack them and eat their soft parts. “This lizard was the result of an evolutionary arms race. After mussels and snails developed ever harder shells, their predators adapted with correspondingly larger and larger teeth,” says Raphael Moreno, paleontologist and curator at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum. A new model of Cyamode can be admired in the shell limestone diorama in the Museum am Löwentor in the special exhibition “Triassic Life – Departure into the World of Dinosaurs” from October 17, 2025.
The exhibition invites you to embark on a journey through the history of the earth: from the climate catastrophe at the Permian-Triassic border to the rise of the dinosaurs. The extinction event of incomparable proportions in the volcanic landscape can be experienced. Animations on large monitors immerse visitors in that time and show how the ecosystems reinvented themselves. Primeval forests and seas have emerged as habitats for animals that surpass each other in their bizarreness.
The giraffe-necked dinosaur Tanystropheus is so named because the length of its neck is several times that of the rest of its body. A body shape that could be his downfall: on display is the bitten off head of a specimen that probably became a victim itself while it was on a prey spree underwater. “In keeping with the diverse body shapes in the Triassic, we have developed a game for the exhibition in which visitors can combine body parts on the screen to create a dinosaur. Among the many possibilities there are 33 dinosaurs that really existed,” says Moreno. “In the Triassic, evolution was completely crazy. Almost everything that we can imagine today with a lot of imagination actually existed back then.”
Mechanical preparation and digital methods
Moreno, a colleague and the armored amphibian “Temmi” lead through the exhibition as comic characters. “I have researched amphibious amphibians myself. In the laboratory area of the exhibition we are showing the giant amphibious amphibians Mastodonsaurushow a fossil from the site ends up as an object in the exhibition. Anyone interested can look over our shoulders virtually and learn how we examine fossils using mechanical preparation and digital methods,” says Moreno.
The museum’s current highlight fossil should not be missed: Mirasaura greybirdia reptile recently described in the journal Nature. Other pieces from the Grauvogel collection, such as impressive scorpions or the wings of giant dragonflies, can also be seen here for the first time. The Stuttgart team is the largest research team on the Triassic period in Germany. Their expertise is supplemented by leading international researchers who have their say via video at four interactive stations.
Before we move on to the dinosaurs in the permanent exhibition, visitors will receive a message. “Climate crises have always existed in Earth’s history – even without human intervention. However, today’s climate change is progressing much faster than we know from the past,” says Moreno. “We should be aware that although these crises continued and there were even winners, most species did not survive.” ■