1.8亿年前的匈牙利地区谁是主宰？在布达佩斯，听古代海的回声

Beneath the soaring roof of the museum's entrance hall, even before the ticket counter, hangs the skeleton of a fin whale more than 20 meters long and weighing over 2 metric tons. The whale was caught in the Atlantic in 1896 and its skeleton, first displayed in Vienna, eventually found its way to Hungary. The architectural design had to factor in the whale, with the ceiling designed asymmetrically to make room for the giant skeleton.

A 122-square-meter glass floor covers a reconstruction of a coral reef, with fish exhibits lying about 60 centimeters below visitors. Around it, aquariums built into the walls contain live fish and corals, which hold about 13,000 liters of water together, or roughly the volume of 70 bathtubs.

According to information displayed at the museum, this permanent exhibition contains more than 200 coral species, around 160 fish and over 1,000 specimens and living examples of mollusks, crustaceans, worms, sea urchins, starfish and other creatures.

Among the most memorable fossils on display is that of a marine crocodile that lived about 180 million years ago. Only part of the prehistoric animal survives, principally sections of its vertebral column and ribs. But the museum has reconstructed the creature around those remains, presenting a predator roughly 5 meters long in a hunting pose.

The label beside the ocean crocodile reads: Place: Hungary. Age: 180 million years. In other words, today's landlocked Hungary was once covered by the sea.

The supercontinent, Pangaea, had begun breaking apart. Between its great northern and southern landmasses stretched an enormous body of water known as the Tethys Ocean. The region that would eventually become Hungary was a small corner of this changing tropical and subtropical world, where islands, shallow marine platforms and deeper basins existed side by side.

As the Tethys gradually contracted, sediments on its floor were compressed, folded and lifted, leading different blocks of crust to migrate and join together. By about 85 million years ago, parts of what is now western Hungary had become relatively stable land crossed by rivers and floodplains.

Hungarosaurus tormai, the first dinosaur to be scientifically described from fossils found in present-day Hungary, was named after the country itself. About 4 meters long, it was hardly a giant by dinosaur standards, but plates of bone covered its body from neck to tail, giving the compact herbivore lots of protection from neighboring carnivores.

The herbivore and the marine crocodile now share the same exhibition hall, less than 10 meters from each other. However, they would never have encountered each other in life, as they are separated by roughly 100 million years.

The exhibition is called "Lost Worlds — The Age of Dinosaurs in Hungary".

Perhaps 80 millions from now — or perhaps much sooner — we humans, too, would have vanished from this world, leaving behind only fossils to be brought here and displayed alongside crocodiles and dinosaurs for future visitors to see.

Just imagine what kind of life would visit that museum.

记者：张周项