Paleontology museum

Paleontology Museum in town of Asenovgrad was founded in 1990 as an affiliate of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). It was established on the basis of paleontological collection, gathered over decades before by the biology teacher in the Assenovgrad high school - Dimitar Kovachev and his students.

The current museum building is a massive 2-storey construction. The exposure on the first floor was created in 1995 and shows the evolution of proboscis animals. The emphasis among all the exhibits is almost 4.5 m long skeleton of an ancient Deinotherium (one of the largest land mammals for the all times, inhabited the region of Rhodope before more than 6 million years) found near village of Ezerovo.

The museum exhibition on the second floor was created in 1998-1999 and contains thousands of artifacts, relics and fossils including some very unique: the only preserved complete skeleton of the hyena in Bulgaria, the only fully preserved head of a saber-toothed tiger, the only fully preserved in the world skeleton of Tiger Metailurus; upper jaw of an animal called Kalimantsi Bulgarika (found near village of Kalimantsi that hence its name) which are a new species in the science, a well-preserved specimen of the monkey Mesopitikus Delsoni and others.

Among the exhibits are also hyenas, tigers, mastodons, gazelles, antelopes, giraffes, horses hipparions (dominant species 8 million years ago), rhinoceros, simple invertebrate organisms and debris, etc..

Address of Museum of Paleontology: Badelema quarter, Asenovgrad