Opened in 1898 for the universal exposition of 1900, the gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy at the National Museum of Natural History contains thousands of skeletons and fossils dating back to the 18th and 19th century.

It was a very sunny day when we decided to go down to this rather macabre place, with its impressively large collection of impressively large specimens…

Spread over two floors nearly 80 metres long, with lofty ceilings and high windows, this magnificent building contains a rare collection – 650 complete skeletons (some of which come from animals that lived in the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes), 1000 specimens preserved in fluid and fossils showing over 600 million years of life on earth, including some amazing dinosaurs.

It’s like stepping back in time, it’s often full of children on school trips, but it’s strange and unmissable and you should pop in!

Here are the photos of our visit.

As you may have noticed in somephotos, the building is showing its age, with cracked paint, some empty display cases and explanatory diagrams that seem to date form the 1950s. Let’s hope a revamp is coming soon…The galerie d’Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie (here) is open every day of the week except Tuesdays from 10am – 5pm. List ticket 45 minutes before closing

Admission: 7€ / free if you’re under 26

Official site (in French): ici

Gallery layout plan (PDF): ici

To check out all our photos of the gallery of palaeontology and comparative anatomy, click the play button below, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen mode.