Extinct animals
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Discover the history of the North Sea in the new, temporary Doggerland exhibition! Live along with the prehistoric people in a world that has been devoured by the sea. Every now and then, the North Sea reveals the secrets of this world, when fishermen find discoveries from this time period in their nets or when they wash up on the shore. Thanks to these discoveries, you can also learn about the story of Doggerland.
Imagine a vast plain, on which all sorts of huge mammals walk around. Mammoths, cave bears, steppe bisons, woolly rhinoceroses, machairodontinae and cave lions. Here and there are groups of trees, but the majority of bushes are low. A tundra landscape with large, winding rivers. This is what the area that we now know as the southern North Sea looked like about 11,000 years ago. We call this area Doggerland.
The period of about 2.5 million years ago up until 11,000 years ago is called the Pleistocene. During the Pleistocene, Texel wasn’t an island, but part of the tundra. You could walk to England across the endless plain! People also used to live in Doggerland. They lived off hunting and collecting edibles from nature. They processed the skins, bones, antlers, and teeth of the animals they ate into clothes, utensils, and tools.
When after the last ice age, the ice caps started to melt, the North Sea was flooded with water. Slowly, Doggerland was lost in the waves. Remains of the animals and people that lived here, are still fished out and end up on the beach during replenishments. Thanks to these prehistoric discoveries we know what the area used to look like and how people lived there. This is the story of Doggerland.
In the Doggerland exhibition you see a selection of the Pleistocene discoveries from the North Sea. In the middle of the exhibition is a life-size model of a woolly rhinoceros. What an enormous animal! And to think that there were a lot more of these giants walking around. Even bigger ones, like woolly mammoths and giant deer or more dangerous ones, like sabre-toothed tigers. Live along with the people who managed to survive amongst these animals as hunters/gatherers.
