Freilichtmuseum "Zeitsprung" Klinge

Description

In Klinge in the district of Spree-Neiße (Brandenburg), the Freilichtmuseum Zeitsprung documents geological and paleontological traces of the Eemian warm period and makes them accessible on site.

The museum is located on a former excavation site in the immediate vicinity of the emerging Klinger See. The presentation focuses on the plant and animal communities that inhabited the region during the Eemian phase, roughly between 128,000 and 115,000 years before present.

The underlying Eem geotope reveals a well-preserved succession of varved clays, clays, muds and peats from a lake that has since silted up. Numerous fossils were recovered from the clay pits at Klinge as early as 1891; in 1903 the Grosche pit exposed an almost complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth, one of the first such finds in Germany. After the former clay pits partially dried out in the late 1970s, preserved layers could be studied further. Between 1988 and 2003 excavations carried out by the Museum für Natur und Umwelt Cottbus produced a rich range of finds.

Vertebrate finds range from moose through red deer, giant deer and wild cattle to reindeer, wild horse, woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth; in addition there are red fox, wolf, beaver, shrew, and various fish and reptile species such as the European pond turtle, pike, perch, roach, bleak, crucian carp and tench. Nearly 100 plant species have also been identified.

Part of the area was placed under nature protection in 2000. With funds from the European Regional Development Fund and the municipality of Wiesengrund, the Freilichtmuseum Zeitsprung was established in 2007–2008 and opened in 2008. On the park-like grounds stands a modern dome that houses a model of a female mammoth with calf as well as information on the excavations, the clay deposits at Klinge and the history of research. In the open-air area there is a wet biotope, an experience trail with life-size replicas of a giant deer, a woolly rhinoceros and two gray wolves, and numerous information panels. A striking feature is a walkable terrain exposure about three meters high and over twenty meters long, on which the development of the Ice Age lake is directly visible.