Searching for Traces …

Every process that occurs in nature, whether animate or inanimate, leaves behind traces. Recognising this, understanding and correctly interpreting it, requires good powers of observation and largely a great deal of expert knowledge. We go in search of traces, comparing these with what we observe today, and in this way can explain many processes that happened in the past. In the history of earth, we know of diverse traces that tell of creatures that once existed, of their way of living, of vanished eco-systems, and of the developmental history of life in general.

We show and explain the development of such traces of life and the possibilities of their preservation, and point out their significance. In stones we find traces, too, of past landscapes, of primordial oceans, of former mountain ranges and climate change. Occasionally, we can also discover events with regional or global impact. Besides the forces in the earth's interior, those processes that act on the earth's surface shape and model the appearance of our planet as well.

The traces thereby generated prove the on-going, partially dramatic change in our dynamic earth. We leave traces in the museum and at selected locations in Styria. Besides, we invite our visitors to set off in search of traces together with us, and to show that fossilised traces can certainly be aesthetic to the eye, too.