Imagine….. 60 - 70 millions years ago….. the Cretaceous period. The Netherlands and Maastricht were on the bottom of the sea. Huge monsters, named Mosasaurus, were swimming in the sea....... Newspaper article, April 2015: On April 18th 2015 the remains of another huge prehistoric Mosasaurus (Meuse Lizard) were found in the ENCI (cement factory) chalk quarry in the St. Pietersberg, Maastricht, the Netherlands, by a 14 years old boy named Lars and his father. Since 1774 this is the sixth Mosasaurus found in the hill (close by Andre's castle!!). Three of the relics (and we guess the fourth will be added soon) can be seen in the Museum of Natural History in Maastricht. Address: De Bosquetplein 7.

From Wikipedia: Mosasaurus is a genus of Mosasaur, carnivorous, aquatic lizard, somewhat resembling flippered crocodiles with elongated heavy jaws. The genus existed during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period (Mesozoic era), around 60-70 million years ago in the area of modern Western Europe and North America. The name means "Meuse lizard", since the first specimen was found near the Meuse River (Latin Mosa + Greek sauros lizard). As with most Mosasaurs, their legs and feet are modified into hydrofoil-like flippers, with the front limbs being larger than the rear limbs. Mosasaurus reached lengths of about 13 - 18 meters (59 ft), somewhat longer than its American relatives Tylosaurus and Hainosaurus. However, Mosasaurus was more robust than the somewhat smaller sized Tylosaurine Mosasaurs. Mosasaurus was among the last mosasaur genera, and among the largest. The skull was more robustly built than in other Mosasaurs, as the mandibles articulated very tightly with the skull. It had a deep, barrel- shaped body, and with its fairly large eyes, poor binocular vision, and poorly developed olfactory bulbs, experts believe that Mosasaurus lived near the ocean surface, where it preyed on fish, turtles, ammonites, and possibly smaller Mosasaurs. The animal remained near the surface and although it was able to dive, it evidentially did not venture into deeper waters. The skull of Mosasaurus is tapered off into a short, conical process, and the jaws were armed with massive, sharp, conical teeth. Their paddle-like limbs had five digits in the front and four in the back. The trunk terminated in a strong tail which, together with serpentine undulation of the whole body, contributed far more to the animal's locomotion than did the limbs.

1764: The first Mosasaurus, genus of mosasaur to be named. The first remains found by scientists were a fragmentary skull from a chalk quarry in the St. Pietersberg, a hill near Maastricht, the Netherlands, found in 1764 and collected by lieutenant Jean Baptiste Drouin in 1766. It was procured for the Teylers Museum at Haarlem in 1784. The first director of the museum published its description only in 1790. He considered it to be a species of "big breathing fish" (Pisces cetacei, in other words: a whale). It is still part of the collection as TM 7424. At some time between 1770 and 1774 a second partial skull was discovered and unearthed. It was found in the grounds owned by canon Theodorus Joannes Godding, who displayed it in his country house on the slope of the St. Pietersberg hill. A local retired German/Dutch army physician, Johann Leonard Hoffmann (1710–1782), also collected some fragments and corresponded about the skull with Dutch Professor Petrus Camper. Hoffmann presumed the animal was a crocodile. In 1786 however, Camper disagreed and concluded the remains were those of "an unknown toothed whale”. Maastricht, an important fortress city, was captured by the French revolutionary armies towards the end of 1794. Accompanying the French troops, although arriving in Maastricht two months after the city had been taken, was geologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond on a mission to secure the piece, together with political commissar Augustin-Lucie de Frécine (1751–1804), who during the campaign tried to transport anything of artistic or scientific value he could lay his hands on to France. Finding that it had been removed from the cottage and hidden within the fortress, Frécine would have offered "six hundred bottles of excellent wine" to those being the first to locate the skull and bring it to him in one piece. Soon a dozen grenadiers would have claimed their reward, carrying the piece with them. In December 1794 it was moved to Paris as a war booty, by decree declared a national heritage and added to the collection of the new Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

In 1998 another skeleton was discovered in the ENCI quarry. It was so big that it did not fit in the Museum. A glass box was built in the Museum's garden for this one, named Bèr after its finder. On September 19, 2012, it was announced that nine days earlier, again a skeleton of what appears to be a Mosasaur was found in the limestone quarry just outside Maastricht, the same quarry that yielded the type specimen of Mosasaurus hoffmannii. Carlo Brauer, an excavator operator at the ENCI quarry, discovered the teeth of the fossil in the shovel of his digger on Monday morning, September 10. In the days following the discovery, museum staff retrieved several large sections of the skull and part of the body and tail of the approximately 13-meters long skeleton. Based on stratigraphy, the age of the specimen was estimated at 67.83 million years, making it about one-and-a-half million years older than "Bèr". From what has been uncovered, this appears to be the oldest known specimen of Mosasaurus hoffmannii or a closely related species. The specimen is nicknamed Carlo, after the ENCI worker who discovered it. On April 18th 2015 the remains of another huge prehistoric Mosasaurus were found in the ENCI chalk quarry in the St. Pietersberg, by a 14 years old boy named Lars and his father. The skeleton will be procured by and displayed in the Museum of Natural History in Maastricht. This specimen is nicknamed Lars, after the boy who discovered it. It will be the fourth in the Museum, all named after their discoverers: Bèr, Carlo, Kristine and Lars. Museum of Natural History: De Bosquetplein 7 Maastricht http://nhmmaastricht.nl/home.html museum@maastricht.nl

ENCI limestone quarry St. Peter’s mountain. Maastricht. More about the ENCI cement factory and quarry in “Walk across the St. Pietersberg” under “City Walks”.

Charcoal drawing in Grotten Noord. (North Caves).

ENCI quarry 2016: After 100 years of having extracted the limestone /sandstone/ marl from the St. Peters mountain, the ENCI cement factory will definitely stop the extraction in 2018. The quarry will be transformed into a tourist attraction and natural area, with walking routes and a swimming pond with a beach. Maybe it is still possible to find fossils there. Click HERE to read updates about the ENCI- quarry.

In 2016 we visited the Museum of National History and there was “Lars”, ready to be freed from the sandstone (picture to the left). You may follow the progress in the museum, from behind a window.

In 2016 the first attraction was built: a floating panoramic viewpoint over the quarry. In April 2017 the stairs into the quarry were finished and the quarry was officially opened to the public. There is a walking route in the quarry. Next project: the natural swimming pond with a beach. In the quarry it is always a few degrees warmer than outside. Address: Luikerstraat 80, Maastricht.

Photo left: No, I did not touch it!! Angela from Brazil, facing the skeleton Fans who are in Maastricht for the André Rieu concerts will of course go sightseeing Maastricht in between the concerts and visit the museums and other interesting places (see the city walks and day trips, described on this website). We even found a playground for children with a mosasaur as a play object!!

October 4, 2025, De Limburger, by Vikkie Bartholomeus Photos: Harry Heuts (left), Rob Oostwegel (right) Translation by Ineke, edited by Alice Leung Paleontologist John Jagt investigates bloodthirsty squid and other sea monsters. From gigantic mosasaurs to tiny mussel shrimp. The fossils from the Maastrichtian rock layer are the life's work of paleontologist John Jagt. This geological period, just before the disappearance of dinosaurs and mosasaurs, is named after Maastricht in scientific circles worldwide. Earlier article in the Limburger: August 18, 2024. The exhibition featuring the 3D-printed skeleton of the mosasaur Bèr opened in Maastricht on Sunday to great interest. The Natural History Museum hopes this will help it find its way back to the surface. Curator and paleontologist John Jagt was present in 1998 when the remains of this mosasaur were discovered in the ENCI quarry. He nearly made it into the records himself as the discoverer of the mosasaur, which is now on display as a complete 3D-printed skeleton at the Natural History Museum in Maastricht. John Jagt's office is a treasure trove, albeit a cluttered one. "Look, this is stuff we scraped off the knuckle of mosasaur Carlo; it gives a glimpse of the flora and fauna from that time. The best part is that we even found tiny droppings from spider crabs that had preyed on Carlo—seriously. You can give those droppings a Latin name, and then you can see which carrion-snatching creatures they were. Almost no one knows that." This weekend, John Jagt will receive two prestigious Belgian awards. Paleontologist John Jagt (64) of the Maastricht Natural History Museum will receive the André Dumont Medal and the Palaeontologica Belgica Award this weekend in Brussels. These are two important awards for his fossil research. For almost 35 years, he has been working on the museum's collection, which has made a name for itself in the scientific community in recent decades. This is primarily due to the discovery of four mosasaurs since 1998: Bèr, Lars, Carlo, and Kris. He is also credited with another leading research from the Maastrichtian period. Partially Professional John Jagt dedicates his awards to the amateur paleontologists who have made the fossil collection so rich. "Those citizen scientists are incredibly important. I sit here all day behind that stupid computer, but they're the ones digging. They deliver. They're not just collectors; they're partial professionals with whom I collaborate effectively. I can rely on them." The Belgian appreciation for his work comes at a special time; his mother, Annie, recently passed away, after whom he named an extinct sea lily (Actuatucametra Annea). He chuckles. "I said at the cremation: whoever can repeat that Latin name will get a prize from me." Several of his associates were present at her farewell. "Some are real friends, very close." John Jagt became fascinated with fossils as a little boy. In primary school, he saw a film that zoomed in on a boulevard in France. "I saw those bluestone tiles. It had rained, and you could just see the fossils in them. Fantastic! My grandmother had an old threshold like that in the garden, and I went and hammered it – bang, bang, bang – and there was a beautiful coral in it. That was number one in my collection." Jagt originally started at the museum with the task of inventorying everything, but he soon realized this is an impossible task. The collection continues to grow, despite the fact that a stop has been announced. Its foundation is formed by nineteenth-century collectors like Casimir Ubaghs, Johannes Binkhorst van den Binkhorst, and Joseph de Bosquet. However, many of their fossils were lost or dispersed because Maastricht lacked a museum or university for a long time. De Bosquet is John Jagt's "great hero"; his portrait hangs in his office as inspiration. From Maastricht, De Bosquet corresponded with scientists like Darwin. Darwin was "astonished and delighted" when he received a drawing by sea mail of a fossil less than 11 millimeters long. A white wart often found on mussel shells. The scientific value of the Maastricht collection is still too unknown, says John Jagt. "When you see what still occasionally surfaces here, you think: how on earth can this be? Specialists sometimes get a fright: did this come from Maastricht?" He is therefore pleased that the collaboration with Maastricht University was established a few years ago. The museum will soon be renovated, and the outdated permanent exhibition will be updated. A strong collaboration with Angola, where many mosasaurs from the Maastrichtian period are found, is underway. In the science lab at the museum, they are prepared and examined before they return to Angola. The discovery of the four mosasaurs remains absolute highlights of his career. The 1990s, in particular, were a golden age, when the cement industry in the Belgian and Dutch marl quarries (ENCI) was still in full swing and excavators regularly cleared fresh hunting grounds for paleontologists. “A mosasaur gives an indescribable feeling. Why isn't there a mosasaur hanging in the station hall? Carnival balloons or Rieu banners hang all over the city, but you can't find the mosasaur. That's a missed opportunity. We have to be content with a trellis-mosa on a children’s playground, they call it a climbing Rex. Sorry, but we should be much prouder of the mosasaur.” Not sacred At the same time, he puts things into perspective. The sea monsters are not sacred. Mosasaurs are always fun to find, but I also look at the other stuff. I'm talking about bloodthirsty squid, about spider crabs whose huge claws could even pull a squid out of the water. The mosasaur represents 5 percent of everything that lived here back then. The rest should be on display in the museum as well. The most famous mosasaur from Maastricht, Mosasaurus hoffmanni, was brought to Paris by the French in 1795 as a "crocodile head”. This is where the realization began that it might be an extinct species; you could say the origins of the theory of evolution lie partly in Maastricht. Spoils of War Will it return to Maastricht? "All things considered, it's spoils of war," but how Paris views that remains to be seen. "The museums in Berlin, London, and Warsaw are also full of type specimens from faraway places. So, there's still a lot to come."

October 10, 2024 De Limburger, by Siebrand Vos Photos by Harry Heuts Translation by Ineke, edited by Alice Leung Maastricht Natural History Museum to undergo major renovations, large garden near the Jeker-river will become freely accessible Maastricht will invest heavily in the renovation of the Natural History Museum, the housing of the mosasaur Bèr, and the botanical garden. The collection of the only family museum needs to be better presented. The Natural History Museum's potential has not been fully utilized in recent years, the city council notes in the accompanying council proposal: "The location, the monumental building, the beautiful (botanical) garden, and the unique collection, which tells the story of the Cretaceous period, the mosasaur, and the unique nature of the past and present, could all be better accessed and presented." In recent years, departed staff members have not always been replaced, curator and paleontologist John Jagt lamented in August 2024 at the opening of the Bèr exhibition. "We need to get the collections in order and digitize millions of fossils. A monumental task." Pride The Natural History Museum can certainly contribute to pride and identity in Maastricht, suggest the Mayor and Aldermen of Maastricht. Not only because of that mosasaur. But also because of the still-little- known fact that the important geological period just before the disappearance of the dinosaurs and mosasaurs was named after Maastricht, and is therefore known worldwide in scientific circles as the Maastrichtian (at the end of the Cretaceous Period, around 70 million years ago). The botanically interesting garden on the Jeker will be made freely accessible during the day to residents and visitors to Maastricht's city center in the master plan. Furthermore, the entrance to the Museum must be made more visible. The city council is asking for €5.3 million to start with for the implementation.

Botanical garden

Entrance of the Museum