It is busy in the backyard of René Fraaije (65). With roaming guinea fowls, a tame goose who listens to the name Gijs and a peacock that makes him heard loudly. But also with their distant ancestors: the T. rex, the Triceratops, the Stegosaurus. Because here in Boxtel in Brabant, on a piece of land as large as six football fields, beautiful has realized the ultimate childhood dream: a dinosaur paradise. Or, as it is officially called: the Oertijdmuseum.
Among the trees are dozens of life -sized dinorplicas and in the large glass hall of the museum you can see the skeleton of a 23 -meter -long giraffatitan (also known as the African brachiosaurus).
Braaije himself lives with his wife in a bungalow at the entrance.
Do not come to him with the cliché that dinosaurs are only for boys. “Every child between four and twelve has a dinosaur phase,” he says firmly. “With one it takes longer than with the other, and in puberty you often see a dip. But almost all of them come back here later. Sometimes dragged by their own children.”
Beautiful is in the news with some regularity: it turned out last fall that the museum has a dinosaur never described before, which is the name Ardetosaurus Viator got. In 2019, the Oertijdmuseum exceeded the limit of 85,000 visitors for the first time; Within a few years, Fraaije hopes to be at 100,000 – soon one -fifth of Naturalis in Leiden. “A success story, especially when you consider where we come from,” he says. “We have become an international attraction of a hobby that got out of hand – we regularly have people from Germany and Belgium here. And that without a structural government subsidy.”
Two sponges
In the shadow of a giant sequoia (“Self -planted as a small tree, more than a quarter of a century ago”), Beautiful tells about the place where it once started: the gravel quarry in Sibculo in Overijssel. “In 1971 we were there on vacation – my parents, my sister, my two younger brothers and me. Actually for the dolmens, but when we saw two older ladies bent over between the gravel, we were immediately fascinated. They searched for fossils, without success. Promptly thought my sister and I were both special.”
The two sponges of about 500 million years old that they took home that day were the starting signal for the family’s fossil love. “From that moment on we went on holiday to a paleontologically interesting destination every year. The Eifel, the Ardennes … The rule was: one day of culture, the other day into the ground.”
Photo Merlin Daleman
Gradually the family collection grew: in the comfortable armchairs in the living room there were huge ammonites – extinct inkesis with rolled up shell – and the cupboards in the bedrooms almost burst out of their seams of the fossils. “In 1978, when I went to study, my parents moved from Sint-Michielsgestel to Gemonde in the neighborhood. There, on the plot of a burnt-out farm, was more space. We converted the old pigsty of 30 by 9 meters into a museum. Pigsadavers and rotte chicken eggs.
The museum was open every first and third Sunday of the month from 12 a.m. to 5 p.m. and was named Ammonietenhoeve. “That initially caused a misunderstanding. In the dictionary, local residents had looked up what Ammonites were and read: supporters of the Egyptian god Ammon or Amon. They feared a sect and asked carefully what we were planning … When we gave them a tour, they were immediately enthusiastic.”
‘Primary -time holidays’
In 1998, Fraaije bought the site in Boxtel. “After my studies, I had saved the money as a travel guide. In fact, I was supposed to get started in oil and gas extraction after my studies, but Shell and I immediately discovered that we were not done.” And so Braaije had rented a luxury coach (“with video recorder and bar on board”) and he organized ‘primordial periods’. “During the day we went looking for fossils, in the evening I told about the geological history of the area. In fifteen years I almost all over Europe, from Provence to Poland, from the southern English coast to Cyprus. Until I finally had enough money to be able to realize my dream.”
In between the Yuccas, Maarten stumbled about something that turned out to be the horn of a triceratops
The Oertijdmuseum opened its doors on 3 April 1999 – the aforementioned Sequoia went into the ground, with which Beautiful also directly transformed the garden from corn field to arboretum, with hundreds of special trees and bushes. “In the beginning we were VVV, Natuurmilieuducation Center and Museum. My wife and I did almost everything themselves; we attracted around 9,000 visitors a year. Over the years we have been able to build our workforce to seventeen FTE, and we built the large glass hall.” There were also two laboratories (where visitors see how volunteers prepare dinosaur bones behind glass) and a dino workshop (where complete skeletons can be mounted). In the meantime, the Museum for Boxtel is such a draw that you can see Dinos at various roundabouts. At the end of 2023, Beautiful received the Van Der Gracht Penning (awarded by the Royal Dutch Geological Mining Society) at the end of 2023 for ‘exceptionally deserving earth scientists’.
Selfies with Maiasaura
Time for a round through the garden. Children take selfies with a Maiasaura – a large herbivore with a ‘duck beak’ – and crawl into the open mouth of a megalodon, the extinct giant shark that dominated the world’s seas a few million years ago. The large images on the wooded plot come from the Philippines, says Fraaije. “The parts are supplied in pieces per sea container, and then we put them together. You also have ready-made models, but then you will soon lose the amount for a nice car for one dino.” Here and there there are also ‘younger’ animals, such as the Mammoet and the Sabeltandtiger, who lived until some 10,000 years ago. “But ice age animals are really less popular with visitors.”
There is a pot fish skeleton in the hall of the Oertijdmuseum.
Various mature male visitors have an Indiana Jones-like hat on. Braaije only wears one during the annual excavations in the US. “Ideal against the sun.” Yes, Wyoming – He starts to shine when he tells about it. Where the museum received large dinoskelets on loan in the past or purchased casts, Beautiful made friends with Bob and Polly, owners of a ranch in the east of Wyoming in 2023. “They have 120 square kilometers of terrain. Small by American standards, large enough for us, because there are all kinds of fossils from around the chalk-tertiary line.” That limit is the transition between the two large geological eras that was ushered about 66 million years ago by a gigantic meteorite impact on the Mexican Peninsula Yucatan – who not only heralded the end of the dinosaurs but also of the Ammonites.
“Everything we find on the site, they donate to our museum. Very nice. We just can’t dig holes deeper than three meters, then the cows fall in. But if you know how to read such a landscape, it is deep. Especially in dry river beds, you will find most. In that regard, the bottom is just what is in it.”
In the summer of 2024 it was hit. Braaije had left for Wyoming with two young scientific colleagues from the Oertijdmuseum – PhD students the rich and Jonathan Wallaard – and trainee Tom van der Linden. “In between the Yucca’s, Maarten stumbled about something that turned out to be the horn of a triceratops. It couldn’t be better, because the Triceratopskop is the logo of our museum.”
In ten days, the four grooves the hundreds of kilos of heavy skull and brought him to their headquarters by truck: a former car parts in the town of Lusk. “We were able to buy that accommodation thanks to a generous gift by a Dutch aged lady, Veronika. So as a tribute we named the skull after her.”
Photo Merlin Daleman
Veronika came to the Netherlands per air mail, safely packed in plaster. Now, little by little, she is cleaned up in an hour after hour in one of the two preparation labs. In the skull you can still see exactly where the blood vessels were running. Lovingly, beautiful points to an unevenness. “Bone swearing. That performed when two triceratops fought each other. With those horns they could hand out big blows.”
The volunteers stand in line to work here, he adds. “There is even a waiting list. We now have seventy – the youngest is 18, the oldest has passed the 90.” Before they can get started in the lab, the preparation volunteers first follow a six -week course. “They start with a scraper; if they have a construction they can also drill or sandblasting later.” He shows half a liberated litter of oviraptor eggs. “The rock around it is rock hard. You really need a good drill for that. But in the end we have a nice object for the museum again. Although we also sell part of our collection to collectors, otherwise it will no longer fit.” For example, the Dinowerkplaats is now a beautiful skeleton of a Langnekdino, which will be auctioned later this year. “40,000 men are in it. With the proceeds we hope to pay for our new building, because we keep thinking ahead.” Investing in the future finds beautiful crucial. “Also in scientific talent. It is a shame that the earth sciences training at the VU University in Amsterdam is now being deleted.”
Soon through, to the rest of the collection. His wife would wait with the food, but now it is already half past six, one and a half hours after closing time, he no longer has too long. So: along the oldest known million-leg in the Netherlands (“310 million years old”), along the dinoveren in Barnsteen, past the litter of dinosians that he once found as a student himself. (“Do you know how to see the difference between eggs from herbivorous and carnivorous dinos? The first are round, the second elongated.”) Along the piece of skull of the whale named after him (PERTUFFLATIUS RENEFARIJKIJENI), Along the find for which scientists come from all over the world to the museum: an ammonic shell with a hermit crab in it.
And of course also along the Ardetosaurus Viator: The skeleton that was known as a diplodocus for a long time. “Until trainee Tom van der Linden discovered a few important differences last fall, among other things in the form of the thigh bones. Then we suddenly turned out to have a completely new species in our possession!”
In the end, Braaije stops the display case with the two fossil sponges with which it started more than half a century ago. Then he opens the door behind the cash register – the access to his house – and calls to his wife. “I will be there in ten minutes, honey!”
