Two of our Institute’s taxonomists - biologists specialised in the discovery, description and classification of species - have found 170 species of animals named after King Leopold III and Queen Astrid in our collection and in databases.

A team of researchers, including palaeontologist Sébastien Olive (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences), has described a 360 million-year-old shark jaw found in the Belgian Ardennes. It is an exceptional find because cartilage almost never fossilizes.