Museo universitario di paleontologia

Built in the second decade of the nineteenth century as a Cabinet of Natural History, the Museum has roots in reality even more distant, as the first collection of natural specimens received at the University of Modena dates back to the legacy of the bishop of Modena Giuseppe Maria Fogliani (1786) of own collection at the Rectory. The most significant portion of the museum was established, however, in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to some important donations. The exposure performed for the most part fossil animals, vertebrates, invertebrates and plant also. The museum is found in three locations: the main office of the Department, in the University, houses the collections of invertebrate and fossils plant, as well as educational activities and research; Via Berengario 14, already home to the Museum of Anatomy, have hosted the "Hall of Dinosaurs" and collections of  fossils vertebrate; while in the Forum Boario there is the headquarters of construction of exhibitions of Dipartimento.Evidences from formations of the Neogene of the Apennines are the segment most substantial asset and must to the research of several teachers of Paleontology at  the University of Modena and naturalists like Peter Doderlein and Dante Pantanelli. Among these, for their interest, deserve mention the remains of marine reptiles of the Mesozoic and the Cretaceous. Part of the skeleton of a whale, recovered about thirty years, completes the range of local fossils of pelagic origin. In 1926 the museum acquired the malacologistic collection of Coppi, with copies also originate from the Apennines Modena. In 1946, it received Bentivoglio's fossils (plant of Upper Carboniferous) and later collections Montanaro Gallitelli (fossils from all over the world). In the sixties, it was the acquisition of skeletons of a Camptosauro and Allosaurus from deposits of Utah, who, along with an ichthyosaur of the Lower Jurassic (West Germany) perfectly preserved and received as a gift from the Foundation Ligabue, hover over the "Hall of Dinosaurs ". Also notable is the collection of fishes and palms from the famous original deposit Bolca, in the Verona area. Are also rich collections of microfossils, in particular, the collection Di Napoli, one of the founders of the modern discipline of micropaleontology.