Mammutmuseum Niederweningen

The Mammutmuseum Niederweningen is a paleontological and geological museum in the municipality of Niederweningen in the Wehntal valley, Canton of Zürich, Switzerland, and one of the few mammoth museums in Europe.BackgroundAbout 185,000 years ago, a side lobe of the Walensee/Rein glacier overlapped on the threshold at the present Pfannenstiel eastern slope from Hombrechtikon into the Glatttal towards Niederweningen, and eroded the overdeepened rock rut of the present Wehntal area. During melting of the glacier, Wehntal, the lower Glatttal and Furttal valleys filled about 180,000 to 150,000 years ago with cold glacial lakes. After another glacier maximum about 140,000 years ago, the ice melted in the last Eemian (interglacial) period back far into the alpine valleys, and during the Würm glaciation and again about 45,000 years ago, mammoths and other Ice Age animals lived in the largely silted Wehntal. With the increasing warming period about 20,000 years ago, the glaciers melted away in stages to Zürich, later Hurden and formed the Seedamm at the Obersee lake area respectively the Ufenau, Lützelau and Heilig Hüsli islands on Zürichsee, and finally retreated into the alpine mountains.