Quite a few museum visitors and nature lovers imagine that finding, collecting, mounting and displaying fossils is an easy and simple task. But this is certainly not true!

Fossils or fossil remains are often found in rocks. Thereupon, they have to be extracted, cleaned and protected in order to be studied and observed. The mentioned procedures are simply called with one word: taxidermy. With appropriate tools and procedures, trained taxidermists mount everything very nicely indeed, from huge dinosaur bones to microscopically small fossils. But the best taxidermist is still nature. This sometimes helps paleontologists uncover most attractive fossil remains. One such example is the set of fossils from the Jurassic strata near Žužemberk. Nature, however, can also damage and destroy fossils extremely quickly, which is the reason why documenting and collecting fossils is all the more important when new pits, ditches and the like are dug for houses, roads, streams and quarries. This is how numerous fossil remains are saved from destruction.