Possibly the longest named museum we’ve been to, but there’s a good explanation. The main building of the National Taiwan Museum is located at the north end of the 2/28 Peace Park in the Zhongzheng district of Taiwan.
From what we could decipher in the museum, the “Land Bank” across the street was turned into a museum in the 1990s. It definitely looks like a bank from the outside. Luckily the first time we visited (in 2016) there were big dinosaur banners on the outside hinting at what’s inside.
After going paying about $1 USD for admission and passing a vault (the small bank part of the museum) the first thing you see is a pack of velociraptors jumping towards the other dinosaurs in the exhibit.
Here you can see that they’re mostly jumping towards an ankylosaur (Zhongyuansaurus) although a sauropod (Haunghetitan) might be getting caught up in the mix. There’s also a pterosaur safely out of harms way, and strangely a plesiosaur even higher up…
Here’s the grounds-eye view of the Tarbosaurus & Haunghetitan mounts
And here’s the Zhongyuansaurus. Unfortunately none of these dinosaurs are from Taiwan, there haven’t been any dinosaurs found in Taiwan to date. Most of these big mounts are from China, and Mongolia. And I believe all the dinosaur fossils are replicas.
From this angle it definitely looks like the Tarbosaurus is going after the Haunghetitan.
Sabrina was impressed with the massive feet on Haunghetitan.
They also have the obligatory T. rex vs Triceratops battle depicted.
And some other assorted highlights from North America.
Walking around the massive glowing taxidermy wall in the background and up the ramp you get a better view of the sauropod.
And they have a sweet cladogram! The scale of some of the dinosaurs is hilarious. The velociraptor is about 10x the size of the sauropod.
I’m also a sucker for a good map, and they have a great one showing the geological formations in Taiwan (and the ages of the rocks).
Notice that lovely Blue-Purple band on the right side of the island? Those are the Mesozoic rocks! Unfortunately it’s mostly been clams so far, but maybe there’s a capsized ankylosaur or some other dinosaur that got washed out to sea waiting to be discovered…
And Sabrina finished off the visit with a cappuccino, in a T. rex mug 🙂
As a side note, we found the store that made these mugs and bought a set, hopefully we’ll post a video soon showing those beauties off!
