The exhibition

110 years ago, workers in the Messel pit near Darmstadt, Germany, came across the first prehistoric horse while excavating rocks nearly 50 million years old. In the following 50 years, almost 70 more or less complete prehistoric horse skeletons were recovered from this most important site in the world for these ungulates. Since 1995, the Messel Pit has been a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site.

A Propalaeotherium voigti, a 48-million-year-old prehistoric horse stallion recovered there in 2015, has now been studied by researchers using the latest digital techniques. In close collaboration with Prof. Dr. Dr. Martin S. Fischer from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Hamburg illustrators Amir Andikfar and Jonas Lauströer have reconstructed the prehistoric horse in its original form and even made it walk. The special exhibition "Urpferd 2.0" uses high-resolution computer tomographies and 3D animations to play through various possibilities of what the prehistoric horse might have looked like. At the same time, visitors get insights into the science of paleontology: the recovery of a find, the preparation of fossils and the animation of a prehistoric horse skeleton.