ANNUAL REPORT 2005
Approved of by the board of our foundation in their meeting of February 4 th, 2006, the third lustrum of our foundation.
PREFACE
For our foundation 2005 was a very quiet year. Both our director and our secretary were very busy with other projects. One collecting trip was
made to France and one to Great Britain. We were able to purchase some nice pleistocene fossils: a skull of a cave bear,a set of hornpits of
Bison priscus and a scapula of Mammuthus primigenius. We are very grateful to mister P.van den Brand for donating his collection of recent
shells to us. In the last days of December we also received an extensive amount of fossils, collected by the late Rinus Legemaate and kindly donated to us by his friend Ruud Lie. From this donation several additions to our collections will be implemented in the oncoming year. Some interesting shells from the British Eocene were exchanged with Mr. C.Newman, who also showed us some fossil collecting sites in Great Britain.
An article about our foundation was published on March 26 th in a newspaper (Utrechts Nieuwsblad), on May 17th we participated in a radio broad
cast (RTV, programma "aan tafel") and the december issue of Votulast contained an article about our foundation.
Our educational folder is available in Dutch, English and French.
As in previous years the foundation is included in the city guide of Utrecht and in the so
called "Kidsgids".
HOUSING
The foundation is housed in Utrecht in the premises at the Kievitdwarsstraat 15.:
- a modest laboratory to clean and preserve fossil shells (12,5 mē)
- two rooms for displaying fossil shells (44,8 mē and 7 mē)
- a basement for displaying miscellaneous fossils (43 mē)
- a cellar for storage of surplus shells (6,7 mē)
- a room for displaying recent shells (29,4 mē)
- a small room for storage of materials (4,5 mē)
All in all we now have 148 mē floor space.
COLLECTIONS
The "Shell of the Year" is a Nemocardium gigas (both valves in connection). This shell was found by Dr. R.Hessel in the Eocene
of the Paris Basin.
On December 31st 2005, there were 53.400 records in our database containing 343.494 specimen.
Compared with 2004 a growth with 604 records and 2.037 specimen. The number of
sites from wich we collected fossil shells rose from 466 to 470.
The effective display area in our 78 showcases amounts to 94 mē,
The storage capacity of our drawers is 336 mē in 3470 drawers.
EQUIPMENT, FURNITURE AND MATERIALS
There were no changes. Nothing new has to be mentioned.
LIBRARY
A small library for naming shells and educational purposes is
available. We can't lend books to the public but give assistance
whenever possible. Our library now contains 1.004 titles (growth 63).
CONTACT
Our foundation can be reached at the following E-mail address:
fossil.shell.museum@xs4all.nl
Our homepage :
http://http://www.fossilshells.nl/
