“The museum is in the Geopark, the Geopark is in the museum”

Stéphane Fouché, responsable des collections de paléontologie. Midi Libre – ALAIN MENDEZ

The establishment is the cultural reference site with its “Traces of the living” trail dedicated to geology which refers to all the sites in the Terres d'Hérault Geopark territory.

The Lodève Museum is one of the fifty or so sites that make up the Terres d’Hérault Geopark application for the Unesco label as cultural sites alongside natural sites. His permanent “Traces of the living” tour, which tells the story of life and evolution on earth over the past 540 million years, is a perfect summary.

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A summary on 700m², before going into the field

“It tells the geological and paleontological story based on witnesses, rocks and fossils collected on the territory”, explains Stéphane Fouché, head of the paleontology collections and member of the scientific committee of the Geopark. The route offers a synthesis and an easily accessible vision, on 700m². It can then send the visitor back to the field, over a vast perimeter of 2,046 km².

A mirror of the territory and of History

“The basis of the museum's scientific project and its collections is to be in touch with the territory that surrounds it. The museum is in the Geopark, the Geopark is in the museum, like a mirror”, adds Stéphane Fouché who developed the route located on the second floor.“We respected the chronology with an animated and introductory film on a 15-meter screen produced by the Montpellier studio Les Fées Spéciales.”

Continental drift… the installation of humanity

It starts from the present and goes back 540 million years with the continental drift, the landscapes that have followed one another. After crossing the dizzying room of time, the visitor discovers the extinct animals and plants that populated the department, fossils only collected locally that allow us to follow the thread of the comings and goings of the sea, the movement of the continents, climate changes, and the activity of volcanoes. Each room delves into a geological period (Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Miocene, etc.). Before arriving at the present day with the mining of rocks in Hérault. “We see the entire history of humanity settling in our country, in connection with another of our courses, the one dedicated to archaeology and prehistory.”

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