Ice Age and Climate

The exhibition "Ice Age and Climate" provides insights into the last 2.6 million years of the Earth's history. The Ice Age is characterized by a constantly changing climate, which changed our landscapes as well as the fauna and flora again and again. It is also the age of the Humans who spread from Africa to the earth.

Just 20,000 years ago, the city of Salzburg was buried under a 1,000 metre thick layer of ice. A model of the Salzach glacier shows the highest ice level 25,000 years ago. At the push of a button, the ice cover can be lifted and the landscape of today is revealed. The power by which glaciers form the landscape can be seen in the time-lapse film footage of the Franz-Josef Glacier in New Zealand.

From today's perspective, it seems almost inconceivable that mammoths lived in Salzburg just 18,000 years ago. Or that in the warm periods of this ice age hippos were just as much a part of the European fauna as elephants that roamed the landscape in huge herds. A special highlight is the mummy of a woolly rhinoceros from Starunia. It is a plaster cast of the animal in its find state from 1929. The exhibition informs about details of this extinct rhino species and the unique finds from Starunia in today's Ukraine.

New: The inner courtyard on the third floor functions as a new exhibition space. A Catalan artist has created a life-size mammoth, a giant deer and a cave hyena.