1/2 René Fraaie caught the fossil collecting virus as a boy.
It all started when René Fraaije, as an 11-year-old boy, found a few fossils in a large pile of gravel. They were fossilized treasures, millions of years old. There, on that family vacation, the fossil collecting bug struck. “That’s how the Prehistoric Museum came into being, from a family hobby,” the founder and director of the museum in Boxtel reflects.
On Tuesday he was awarded the Waterschoot van der Gracht medal for his years of efforts to bring geology to the attention of a wide audience. It is the highest honor available to earth scientists in our country.
“I was completely amazed and never expected that I would be included in that nice list of predecessors,” René Fraaije responds with gusto. “I fell completely silent when I got that phone call.”
Those fossils that he found 53 years ago as a little boy are still on display in a display case in the museum. Furthermore, the public can marvel at an impressive collection of dinosaur skeletons and other treasures from the past.
Since last Saturday, real dinosaur feathers have been on display, a special piece of history from 100 million years ago, excavated in Myanmar. Never before have such remains been seen in the Netherlands.
“I’m in charge here, but I wouldn’t mind swapping seats.”
In the preparation laboratory, which is also accessible to the public, old bones are removed from stones. From the two-meter-long lower jaw of a giant salamander that walked here 200 million years ago, to tiny crabs from Cyprus that you can barely see with the naked eye.
“That’s how I once started, peering through a microscope,” says the director. “I’m in charge here, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind swapping chairs.” Everything is carefully cleaned, and once everything has been removed from the stone, the animal can be mounted.
The museum is run by a team of enthusiastic volunteers. They come from far and wide to work here, even from Amsterdam and Rotterdam. “It is a very nice team. We do it not only with our heads, but also with our hearts.”
Young people who once interned at the museum find work all over the world. “Some now work in Finland, Germany and America, and we stay in touch. That is also good for our network and the museum,” says René.
“He encourages others to continue learning.”
The director’s two brothers are still avid fossil hunters. They recently returned with a fossilized tuber from New Zealand. It turned out to contain a beautiful crab that was 15 million years old, which volunteer Yvonne Coolen managed to uncover with precision and patience.
Every week Yvonne drives seventy kilometers from her hometown to Boxtel to prepare treasures from the distant past. “Very well deserved,” she says about the award. “He encourages others to continue learning, and he has achieved a lot.”
Next year the Prehistoric Museum will celebrate its 25th anniversary. More than 80,000 visitors take a look every year. “Half of the visitors are young, between 4 and 12 years old. That is fantastic, because there we can lay the seeds for the future,” says a proud museum director.
