Qualla: Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum

Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 鷹継剣矢, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1988, two teeth changed everything. They were small, serrated, unmistakably carnivorous, and they turned up in the mudstone banks of the Sugiyama branch of the Takinami River in Katsuyama, Fukui Prefecture. Previous digs at the same site had already produced a nearly complete crocodilian skeleton in 1982, but those teeth proved that dinosaurs had lived in this mountain-ringed corner of central Japan. A dozen years and billions of yen later, a shimmering silver dome designed by the architect Kisho Kurokawa rose over Nagaoyama Park, just 5.5 kilometers from the quarry itself. The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum opened on July 14, 2000, and it has since become one of Asia's foremost paleontological institutions, a place where five dinosaur species bear the Fukui name because they were first described from fossils found in the surrounding hills.

Image: 鷹継剣矢 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum: Five Dinosaurs Called Fukui

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M'akhr, CC BY-SA 4.0. No other prefecture in Japan can claim a roster like this. Fukuiraptor kitadaniensis, a carnivore described in 2000, was the first dinosaur formally named from Fukui's rocks. Fukuisaurus tetoriensis, an herbivorous iguanodontian, followed in 2003. Then came Fukuititan nipponensis...

Image: M'akhr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum: Descent into Deep Time

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SONIC BLOOMING, CC BY-SA 4.0. Visitors enter the museum on the third floor and immediately step onto a 33-meter-long escalator that descends to the basement. The effect is deliberate: you travel downward through time. At the bottom lies Dino Street, a corridor lined with real fossils from around the world mou...

Image: SONIC BLOOMING | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum: A Living Geopark

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Palaeotaku, CC BY 4.0. The museum is not an island. Since 2009, all of Katsuyama City has been designated a Japanese Geopark, and since 2014 the museum has operated a Field Station adjacent to the actual Kitadani Dinosaur Quarry, open from late April through early November. Visitors can tour the excava...

Image: Palaeotaku | CC BY 4.0

Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum: Kurokawa's Silver Shell

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kyoww (composition), CC BY-SA 3.0. Kisho Kurokawa, one of the founders of Japan's Metabolist architecture movement, designed the museum as the centerpiece of an exposition hosted in Nagaoyama Park. The total construction cost reached approximately 14 billion yen, with 9.15 billion devoted to the building itself an...

Image: Kyoww (composition) | CC BY-SA 3.0