Category: Civil Architecture > Museum
District: Aveiro > Arouca > Canelas > Aldeia de Cima
Situated in the serene Aldeia de Cima, in Canelas, Arouca municipality, this museum is located in an environment that naturally merges with the local landscape. The village houses, with their schist roofs, seem to tell the geological story of the region, a material that has been extracted from these lands for centuries. The museum's presence here is no accident, as it is precisely in the vicinity that the quarries are located from which the precious evidence of the past was rescued.
The Trilobite Museum houses an exceptional collection of fossils that transports us five hundred million years back, to a period when Arouca was submerged by an ancestral sea. The highlight of the collection are the trilobites, organisms that dominated the oceans for a vast period of Earth's history. Some of the specimens exhibited here are considered the largest in the world of their kind, testifying to the grandeur of prehistoric life. In addition to trilobites, it is possible to observe a diversity of Middle Ordovician marine invertebrates, such as bivalves, gastropods, cephalopods, brachiopods, and graptolites, each telling a part of the planet's history.
The creation of this interpretation center resulted from a unique process, which began in 1988, during industrial slate extraction work. As the rocks were cleaved into thin slates, the first fossils began to emerge, initially seen not as an obstacle to exploitation, but as a find of inestimable value. Recognizing the importance of these remains, and after successful exhibitions at several universities, the Canelas Geological Interpretation Center was established in 2006. This space is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and study of a unique paleontological heritage, becoming an essential hub for the investigation of Ordovician geology.
Upon visiting this museum, the public is invited to delve into a fascinating narrative about the evolution of life on Earth. The space was designed to clarify the mystery behind the presence of marine fossils on mountaintops, revealing how schist rocks hold "photographs" of beings that inhabited the seas hundreds of millions of years ago. Through videos, explanatory texts, and detailed images, visitors will understand the processes of fossil formation and the importance of these records for science, offering a didactic perspective on our planet's geological history.
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.pt
Coordinates DD: 40.9624704,-8.2157642
Coordinates DMS: 40°57'44.9"N 08°12'56.8"W
Weather Canelas
On-duty Pharmacy Canelas
