Soon a new dinosaur at the Museum? We need your support to help 'Ben', an authentic and almost complete plateosaurus, move into our Dinosaur Gallery. Donate and join the Plateoteam!

For the first time in over a century, the Dinosaur Gallery of the Museum of Natural Sciences will add a new, original dinosaur fossil to its collection. Coming in at 210 million years old, Ben the plateosaurus will be the oldest ‘Brussels sprout’.

Ben was entrusted to our care by the town of Frick in Switzerland. We have received a gigantic 200-piece dinosaur puzzle from them. It’s now up to us to release him from his repository of sediment and plaster so we can present him to you in December 2017.

The palaeontological work, which is a painstaking process, started in May 2016. Ben is gradually starting to reveal some of his secrets to us. What is very unusual for an original fossil is that its excellent constitution will allow us to exhibit it outside a display case.

But we need your help, so that thousands of visitors will soon be able to admire Ben. We are looking for 25,000 euro to fund the cost of exhibiting Ben: the assembly and installation on a tailor-made metallic structure, the construction of a podium and development of educative support.

Lend your support for this project: by sharing information about it on social media, talking about it to family and friends, in your children’s class, at work! And above all... join the Plateoteam!

Oh, and this is the video we made about Ben.