Natalie Cooper and Sive Finlay already posted on this blog about the amazing old stuff you can find in a Natural History Museum (here and here)

Palaeo collections are also special, I spent one week in the Smithsonian Institution Paleobiology collections to measure some Eocene American primate teeth and I was amazed by the quality of their collections. But the nice thing about Palaeo collections is that when you’re looking for a particular specimen, you always come across wonders you didn’t expect.

Rows of drawers...

...Containing loads of boxes...

...Each one containing tiny fossils, like this [Tinimomys](http://paleodb.org/?a=basicTaxonInfo&taxon_no=52321) molar.

But it’s not just tiny primate teeth!

Some random mammoth skull...

...Can be found near paleo-shark teeth...

...With some weird [Helicoprion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicoprion) spiral teeth!

Oh and yes, not to mention the dinosaurs such as this [hadrosaurid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrosaurid) skull...

...Or this [sauropod](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropod) one.

And I even found, hiding in a drawer... a T-Rex!

Photo credit: Thomas Guillerme, with the kind permission of Michael K. Brett-Surman.

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