This double mineral of apophyllite and natrolite from the Klaus DZIUBA collection fills a gap in two senses: on the one hand in the Geo collection as secondary volcanite minerals of exactly this type, on the other hand as a typical late filling of former gas bubble cavities in dark, iron-rich volcanic rocks. The fine and finest, radially arranged needles of the aluminum-rich natrolite are very fragile! Natrolite is one of the zeolites, which are also called “cooking stones” because they expand when heated and water vapor escapes. These particularly loosely structured framework silicates have channel-shaped cavities, which explains their importance in technology as ion exchangers or molecular sieves. The piece and several others in the DZIUBA collection come from a region of India that is famous for these minerals, Pune (“Poona”), which is located in the middle of huge basalt deposits of over 500.000 m that are extremely important in terms of geological history² size and 3.000 meters thick.

Even in a museum you are never safe from spectacular finds, as this case shows. Since the mid-1970s, a historical bird collection, a gift from the University of Göttingen, has been stored in the stacks. In 2005, the ornithologist Frank Steinheimer rummaged through the depots of the Hanover State Museum in search of bird specimens from James Cook's last expedition (1778). In the matching cupboard there is a magnificent moho (Mold noble). Thanks to several unusual features, Steinheimer was able to immediately identify this specimen as a holotype of the now extinct species and thus clearly establish that the Moho came from Cook's last trip. This means that the Moho is not only our most scientifically valuable animal, but also our oldest specimen.

Franz-Jürgen Harms' collection has brought many geologically younger fossils into the state museum's traditionally very Jurassic and Cretaceous geo-collection: These also include plant fossils from thin sedimentary layers between the typical volcanic basalt layers of the island of Iceland. These incompletely carbonized plant remains are usually called lignites in this country, and in Iceland “surtrarbrandur”, so it is not surprising that the site itself is called “Surtarbrandsgil”. It is located in the northwest of Iceland. The fossilized leaves come from a polar flora of the Miocene (approx. 15 million years). On the underside they have the characteristic brown-black color of the carbonization process, but on the upper side they have a white crust, which consists of light mini-shells of diatoms deposited on it.

It was the summer of 1948 - Lower Saxony was young and the aftereffects of the Second World War were clearly noticeable. A large animal is sneaking through northern Germany. A cougar? No, it is a male wolf who came north via the old Elbe river valley. The population is in turmoil, the up-and-coming press in Hanover can write headlines, the hype about the “Strangler” is taking off. He is said to have killed over a hundred cattle and sheep, but the people who are more clever are those who can use it to legalize their illegal slaughter. On August 2, 27, the drama came to an end. Herman Gaatz from Eilte kills a male wolf and donates it to the Hanover State Museum. However, the animal only arrives there after being “kidnapped” by overzealous journalists, so that only a bust can be prepared. However, this will remain the highlight of the natural history department for many years.

While formatting large blocks of sandstone, a crocodile skull contained in the rock was hit: it was sawn through, but fortunately horizontally, so that its outlines are clearly visible and can be determined paleontologically. It is the extinct crocodile Pholidosaurus from the classic Obernkirchen sandstone of the Lower Cretaceous from Bückeberg (Berriasian, approx. 140 million years ago). The long, narrow snout is similar to that of today's Ganges gharial. Pholidosaurus was a contemporary of the dinosaurs that left their tracks near Münchehagen and Obernkirchen as well as other Lower Cretaceous locations. The quarry operator at the time, Klaus KÖSTER, donated the piece a few decades after it was discovered. Obernkirchen sandstone is a very high-quality natural stone with almost a thousand years of mining history, which is quarried for sophisticated building reconstructions of magnificent historical buildings, but also modern facade stone slabs.

Collecting and replicating have long been part of people's leisure activities. Since the middle of the 18th century, wax-like substances have made it possible to immortalize natural history in a realistic manner. And so wax replicas based on the theme of fruit were created in various workshops. These could be purchased via subscription, among other things. In Hanover we keep over 300 pieces of wax fruit from two different manufacturers: Arnoldi and Zwirner. The last one is of particular value because this manufacturer was only on the market for a few years and is therefore rare to find. A publication on the topic was published in 2011.

The rhodochrosite, which grows in batches, often forms concentric rings with slight color variations when it crystallizes, which makes it an attractive "eye-catcher", clearly visible here on a slice of rock from the collection of Margret and Wolfgang LEMBCKE. Chemically, it is a manganese carbonate, which occurs almost worldwide. The piece shown comes from Catamarca in Argentina. Actually, it is not hard enough, but rhodochrosite is still often processed into decorative and decorative stones, for example into balls, bowls, ashtrays or even cabochons for necklace pendants. Nowadays, simple, slightly transparent slices of the mineral, also known as “raspberry spar,” are often produced. Interestingly, rhodochrosite prefers to form in vein deposits together with gold, silver and zinc ores.

Hermann von Heinemann's small butterfly collection is one of the Hanover State Museum's greatest scientific treasures. Hermann von Heinemann (1812-1871) was a trained lawyer and worked in administration. He enjoyed spending his free time in nature; at first he was fascinated by beetles, but later von Heinemann focused primarily on butterflies. Here he made a big name for himself in 1859 with the publication "The Butterflies of Germany and Switzerland" - which is still a classic of butterfly science today. His collection of valuable small butterflies ended up in the Hanover Provincial Museum, today's State Museum, and is still used by experts to clarify various questions.

An exception in the middle of the turnip-shaped, cup-shaped and mushroom-shaped Upper Cretaceous sponges: Due to the flat, flat-shaped shape of this sponge, the swirling of water no longer had to be taken over only by the outer pores now below, but also by many pores on the inner, or top side. In order to improve the separation of fresh and process water, this unusually large specimen of Lophiophora incrustans From Rainer AMME's collection, there are many raised mini "chimneys" for draining the filtered water. The muddy Upper Cretaceous seafloor was not a suitable substrate for a crust-like sponge, which is why this specimen was rooted on a washout of other fossil hard parts (two baculites, an armpod, and much more), which in turn had probably lain in the current shadow of a large ammonite. A young specimen of the sponge also docked in search of solid ground Camerospongia fungiformis !

Major Heinrich Kirchhoff (1789-1871) was an ornithologist at heart. In the 19th century he collected and bought one of the largest private collections of bird specimens in Germany - all in the heart of Lower Saxony, on the Schäferhof near Nienburg. The collection comprised over 5000 specimens, and today around 2500 are still kept in the magazines in Hanover and some in Göttingen. Kirchhoff was one of the first members of the German Ornithological Society; he welcomed all the leading ornithologists of his time to his Schäferhof domain. He also attached great importance to excellent preparation, which, in addition to the cultural and historical side, is a particular value of the collection.

A “Harz classic” is this mineral grade with malachite, azurite, cerussite on galena. The first three copper and lead carbonates mentioned together with the lead sulfide form a so-called paragenesis, i.e. they have crystallized together under the same conditions and therefore grow together. The piece comes fromschulenberg, Wheel of Fortune pit, and is one of the highlights from the deposit collection of Oberbergrat Carl Georg Christian Freiherr GROTE around 1850 in Clausthal. Its calcium carbonates are also outstanding: “A real treasure are the more than 300 calcite specimens [from the Freiherr Grote collection], in all sizes, shapes and colors…” wrote the museum’s volunteer mineralogist, Dr. Brigitte Perner in 1996, after she had painstakingly and meritoriously located and brought together all the pieces of the State Museum's oldest surviving mineral collection in the storage holdings that had been relocated several times, including the one shown here.

In natural history, conchylia is a collection of mussel and snail shells. The Hanover State Museum has a considerable inventory of its own. The collection of the military chaplain Richard Knoche forms the basis. He worked as a pastor in Hanover from 1867 until his death in 1892. Knoche earned an excellent reputation in the field of conchylia and his collection, which was purchased by the Hanover Provincial Museum in 1891 for 1300 marks, is considered one of the most important collections of that time. Knoche was also committed to animal protection. The sermon that he gave in September 1879 in the Clemenskirche on the topic “Have mercy on the animals” is famous.

A true find of the century within the STRUCKMANN collection is this complete skeleton of the fossil lizard Callimodon pulchellus! Coming from the calcareous marine sediments of the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) around 155 million years ago, it is a great specialty simply because, as a small, land-dwelling reptile, it is an indirect reference to the existence of islands in the shallow sea.

The western edge of Hanover consists largely of these stony, previously muddy-calcareous seabeds from the Jurassic period. Before the large-scale development that can be found today, in the 19th century there were a number of quarries, e.g. B. were collected on the Lindener Berg or the Tönniesberg. Our beautiful bridge lizard comes from Ahlem. Despite their similarity, bridge lizards are not closely related to real lizards.

Pieces from the 19th century often have labels written in “Kurrentschrift” – as do most of the objects from the Struckmann Collection. These labels contain important information about the objects, but are often difficult to decipher given today's reading habits.

The Göttingen forest assessor Hans Domeiner handed over his large collection of bird eggs to the Hanover State Museum in October 1950. The eggs came from the years 1904 to 1929. Since 1923, Domeier had collected almost exclusively in the Göttingen area. All dates when the eggs were found are meticulously recorded in diaries so that spatial and temporal allocation is possible. Such data is more relevant than ever for the processing of historical distribution maps and ecological questions.

On this limestone slab from the Lower Muschelkalk (Middle Triassic, approx. 245 million years) there are some excellently preserved fossil cilia. They belong to the species Encrinus liliiformis and were collected by Otto KLAGES in Erkerode (Elm). These animals (not plants!), which belong to the echinoderms, were very successful in earlier geological times and, having firmly attached themselves to the subsoil, colonized large areas of the seabed, including in the so-called “Germanic Muschelkalk Sea”. However, every now and then severe storms swept across this sea, tearing large quantities of these crinoids from their roots. Later, ocean currents caused most of the hard parts of the dead animals to lie in the same longitudinal orientation.

Glass plates were the dominant medium in the early years of photography: high-resolution, but unfortunately very fragile and not durable. 5800 of these fragile plates were digitized in a large project at the beginning of the 21st century and have been available for various purposes ever since. The photographs mainly come from the period between 1925 and 1939 and show Lower Saxony landscapes, documents from the museum sector (exhibitions, museum rooms and the people who worked here at the time) and reproductions from books and magazines. A treasure trove for anyone who wants to understand developments in the urban and landscape history of Lower Saxony today.

This rock slab with the spiral casings of ammonites comes from Kurt WIEDENROTH (Androgynoceras cf. capricornus and Liparoceras cf. gallicum) and the straight rostrums of Belemnites (“thunderbolts”, internal skeletons; genus Passaloteuthis). It was discovered in the Lias, the Lower Jurassic (approx. 185 million years ago) near Wolfsburg by WIEDENROTH and prepared for him himself. The socialization of both groups of squid - the Nautilus-like ammonites and the squid-like belemnites - corresponds to the hard parts being washed together after the animals died on the seafloor of the Lower Jurassic Sea. Liparoceras is a particularly attractive ammonite with very distinctive ribs. The rather large plate weighs 35 kg!

Dioptase is a copper silicate - like some other copper minerals, it is characterized by its characteristic deep green color. Jewelry is rarely made from dioptase because, with a hardness of 5, it is relatively soft compared to diamond (hardness 10) or the equally green, easily confused emerald (hardness 7,5 to 8). This makes the Dioptase all the more important for collectors as a so-called “step”, i.e. a representative, large piece with well-formed crystals, usually in typical adhesions with other minerals, in the case of Dioptase usually calcite.

Dioptase is formed in the weathering or oxidation zone of copper ore deposits and is therefore an indicator of the sought-after metal. Our piece comes from the world famous Tsumeb copper mines in Namibia.

Globally, dioptase is a rare mineral. In addition, standard collections usually contain significantly smaller specimens - which is why our diopter is a real showpiece due to its extraordinary size.

Dr. Brigitte PERNER was an enthusiastic mineral and rock specialist as well as a collector and also a volunteer in the geo-collection of natural history. She donated her entire collection, which also includes the polished Orbiculite spherical granite slab shown here. The piece comes from Tampere in southern Finland.

The exact genesis of the typical, spherical feldspar special formations of this rock is still debated to this day. In addition, orbiculite probably does not belong to the true granites, but to the slightly darker granodiorites. The eponymous spheres and ellipsoids consist of feldspars and some quartz in the core, while dark mica (biotite) and dark band silicates (amphiboles) are also deposited on the outside. On the very outside there is usually another, light-colored border made of pure potassium feldspar (orthoclase). The structure between the “spheres” is purely granitic.

Table tops are often made from this very decorative stone!

The Great Ammonite Patagiosites stobaei from the Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) of the eastern edge of Hanover (Höver and Misburg) is, together with even larger representatives from the Cretaceous of Münster, one of the giants of this group of fossil squid. Fossils of this size are usually broken into several pieces; Only rarely can you find a “perfect” specimen like the one shown here in the marl pits east of Hanover. However, it is still not complete: Since the animal's actual living chamber, which is always very large, usually breaks off from the housing and is therefore missing in most of them, you have to add the 75 cm diameter of ours Patagiosites Add at least another decimeter to the overall size. It is the one shown Patagiosites not a fossil in a preserved shell, but a stone core, i.e. the fossilized inner filling of the squid shell.