The Ulster Museum in Belfast

My mum is from Northern Ireland and we all go over in Easter time to see her family. Yesterday was my last day in Belfast and we went to see the Ulster Museum.



It looks really new on the inside. When you go up there is a huge space and you can see up all the floors. One of the first things you see is this dinosaur:



It is called Edmontosaurus Annectens which is one of the last dinosaurs that didn't fly. This skeleton is taken from bones from lots of different dinosaurs. There was another dinosaur that you could see on the floor above:



It is an easy one to recognise because of the skull. It is a Triceratops.

This next one was another easy one to recognise:



It is a type of massive deer called Megaloceros Giganteus. I saw one before in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow where they call it an Irish Elk but it is the same thing. The skull looked like a red deer skull but the antlers and pedicles were absolutely massive and went out to the sides.



Most of the cool skulls were all in the same room further along.



↑ This is a python skull. It is bigger than my boa constrictor skull which I wrote about a few weeks ago.



↑ This is a tiger skull but it didn't say what type. It was left out so people could touch it but you weren't allowed to open the jaws in case you broke any teeth.



↑ This is a black rhino skull and again you could touch it which was cool. There are two types of rhinos are black rhinos are the smaller but they are still as heavy as a car ! The horn from the front was missing.



↑ This is a type of crocodile from India.It is called a garial and it eats fish.



↑ This is an alligator skull from America.



↑ This is me with a woolly mammoth tusk. Some scientists think the tusks helped the mammoths move snow off the plants that they ate. Some scientists think this is what reindeer use their antlers for too, which is why reindeer are the only type of deer where both males and females have antlers.



↑ This is an ancient skeleton of a man who was about 35 years old and whose grave was found in County Londonderry. He has a lot of problems with his bones called osteoarthritis.



↑ This calf skull was very weird. It was like two skulls joined together. This was a copy of the actual skull, but the real skull was connected to just one neck and body. This was one of my favourite skulls in the museum. I wish I had one !

I think this was a brilliant museum. There were lots of things that I haven't written about here about history and Egypt (my Uncle Ken who came with us is an Egyptologist). I want to come back here the next time I come to Northern Ireland.

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