Sano City Kuzuu Fossil Museum

A natural history museum with a wide range of exhibits, including fossils and skeletal specimens.

Among the six permanent exhibition categories, the highlight is the reconstructed skeleton of the “Nippon Sai,” a natural monument of Sano City. You can view up close the excavation scene display, the full reconstructed skeleton, and a life restoration model based on remains unearthed in a limestone mine in Aizawa Town, Sano City, where nearly the entire body was found. This is the only place in Japan where a complete rhinoceros fossil skeleton has been discovered.

The museum also features Cenozoic fossils such as the world’s smallest Naumann’s elephant and the impressive Yabe’s giant antlered deer, as well as Mesozoic fossils like ammonites and conodonts, and Paleozoic fossils found in limestone strata. Explore them to deepen your understanding of ecosystems from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years ago.

Reflecting the limestone-rich environment around the museum, the exhibits also include a wide variety of limestone collected from across Japan. It’s fun to compare the surprising charm of limestone, noticing how its color and texture differ from region to region even though it is the same material.