The Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum (Horuru) in Fukushima Prefecture will celebrate its 40th anniversary in October. Known as a “treasure trove” for fossils, the museum displays numerous ancient fossils and offers educational and fun experiences for families.
The museum stands on land that was once an ancient ocean where many fossils have been unearthed. The most notable discovery made here was the 1968 one by Tadashi Suzuki, then a high school student, who found the fossil of a new genus of plesiosaurs on a riverbank.
“I was deeply moved by the discovery because it overturned the common belief that dinosaur and elasmosaur fossils could not be found in Japan,” Suzuki, now 72, recalls.
